Jason Frank appointed professor at the University of Amsterdam

Jason Frank of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, has been appointed professor of Numerical Analysis and Dynamical Systems at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.

Frank researches dynamical aspects of numerical algorithms for solving ordinary and partial differential equations.  Continuous models often have dynamical behavior which can be understood using tools of applied analysis.  Numerical algorithms for solving those models may or may not exhibit analogous dynamical behavior.   An important example is the conservation of energy in conservative systems - algorithms that preserve energy tend to yield more reliable simulation data than those without this property.   This is especially relevant when the goal of simulation is to produce a data set for statistical analysis, since inconsistent dynamical behavior leads to biased statistics.  Frank's work addresses applications in atmosphere and ocean science and energy production and distribution.

The special chair at the UvA was created under the Foundation for Higher Education in Applied Mathematics and has been continually filled since 1952 by CWI scientists, among whom A. van Wijngaarden, builder of the first computer in the Netherlands and long time director of CWI.

Prof. dr. ir. Jason Frank (1970, Hutchinson, Kansas, USA) studied aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas and received his PhD in mathematics from Delft University of Technology in 2000, from which time he has been a researcher at CWI.  In 2002 he received an Innovative Research Grant (Veni) from NWO to carry out research on numerical methods for Hamiltonian partial differential equations.  Since 2007 he leads the group MAC1 Dynamical Systems and Numerical Analysis at CWI. He is member of the editorial board of SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing.