The Manchester Numerical Linear Algebra group was very active in 2014. This post summarizes what we got up to. Publications are not included here, but many of them can be found on MIMS EPrints under the category Numerical Analysis.
A new venture for several of us this year was to make our software available on GitHub: Deadman, Higham, Relton, Sego, Zhang.
PhD Students
Three students successfully defended their theses:
- Ramaseshan Kannan, Numerical Linear Algebra Problems in Structural Analysis, Ph.D., University of Manchester, October 2014, 143 pp.
- Samuel D. Relton, Algorithms for Matrix Functions, their Fréchet Derivatives, and Condition Numbers, Ph.D., University of Manchester, November 2014, 146 pp.
- Leo Taslaman, Algorithms and Theory for Polynomial Eigenproblems, Ph.D., University of Manchester, December 2014, 153 pp.
Sam and Leo are now postdoctoral Research Associates in the group. Ramaseshan is a Senior Engineer at Arup, working in the Manchester office.
Weijian Zhang joined the group in September as a PhD student working with Nick Higham.
Sam Relton and Mary Aprahamian served as President and Treasurer, respectively, of the Manchester SIAM Student Chapter.
Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs)
Jennifer Pestana joined the group in January, from Oxford University, to work with Françoise Tisseur.
Javier Perez joined the group in September, to work with Françoise Tisseur.
Tim Butters joined the group in January to work as a postdoctoral Knowledge Transfer Associate with Stefan Guettel and Nick Higham, in a project with Sabisu.
Lijing Lin (2007-2014) left the group in September to take up a Research Associate position in the Faculty of Life Sciences at The University of Manchester.
Amal Khabou (2013-2014) left in September to take up a Maître de conférences position at Université Paris Sud.
Meisam Sharify (2013-2014) left in May to take up a post as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C. Tehran, Iran.
Presentations
Members of the group gave presentations at the the following conferences and workshops.
IMA Conference on the Mathematical Challenges of Big Data, London, December 16-17, 2014 (Higham).
Structured Numerical Linear and Multilinear Algebra: Analysis, Algorithms and Applications, Kalamata, Greece, September 8-12 2014 (Noferini).
Spectral Theory Workshop to celebrate the 70th birthday of Brian Davies, King’s College London, 30 October 2014 (Tisseur).
4th IMA Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimisation, Birmingham, September 3-5, 2014 (Aprahamian, Berljafa, Khabou, Pestana, Relton, Strabić, Tisseur).
11th World Congress on Computational Mechanics, Barcelona, 20-25 July 2014 (Kannan).
International Workshop on Operator Theory and Applications, Amsterdam, July 14-18, 2014 (Tisseur).
SIAM Annual Meeting, Chicago, July 7-11, 2014 (Aprahamian, Deadman, Guettel, Lotz, Zhang).
First Joint International Meeting RSME-SCM-SEMA-SIMAI-UMI, Bilbao, June 30-July 4, 2014 (Noferini).
Householder Symposium XIX on Numerical Linear Algebra, Spa, Belgium, June 8-13, 2014 (Deadman, Guettel, Higham, Khabou, Lin, Noferini, Pestana, Taslaman, Tisseur).
10th International Workshop on Accurate Solution of Eigenvalue Problems (IWASEP10), Dubrovnik, Croatia, June 2-5 (Sego, Strabić).
Structured Matrix Days, XLIM, Université de Limoges, France, May 26-27, 2014 (Noferini).
Advances in Numerical Algorithms and High Performance Computing, University College London, April 14-15, 2014 (Deadman, Higham, Relton).
Napier 400th Anniversary Celebrations: Computation in Mathematics Workshop, ICMS, Edinburgh, April 2, 2014 (Higham: Video podcast).
Workshop on Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problems, The University of Manchester, April 23-25, 2014 (organized by Tisseur, Pestana, Kressner and Michiels and attended by the whole group).
Annual Meeting of the International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Erlangen, March 10-14, 2014 (Guettel).
International Workshop on Eigenvalue Problems: Algorithms; Software and Applications, in Petascale Computing March 7-9, 2014 Tsukuba, Japan (Guettel, Tisseur).
2014 SET for BRITAIN exhibition at the House of Commons (Mary Aprahamian presented a poster).
Conference and Workshop Organization
The group organized three events in Manchester.
- Stefan Guettel and David Silvester, along with the whole Numerical Analysis group: Alan Turing Meeting, The University of Manchester, June 6, 2014.
- Françoise Tisseur and Jennifer Pestana, along with Daniel Kressner and Wim Michiels: Workshop on Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problems, The University of Manchester, April 23-25, 2014.
- Sven Hammarling and Nick Higham: New Directions in Nonlinear Optimization, School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, March 19, 2014.
Several minisymposia were organized:
- Mary Aprahamian and Stefan Guettel: Innovative Linear Algebra Techniques for Complex Networks at the SIAM Annual Meeting, Chicago, July 7-11, 2014.
- Edvin Deadman, and Sivan Toledo (Tel-Aviv University): High-Performance Algorithms for Functions of Matrices at the SIAM Annual Meeting, Chicago, July 7-11, 2014.
- Mary Aprahamian and Nick Higham: Innovative Techniques for the Analysis of Complex Networks at the 4th IMA Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimisation, Birmingham, September 3-5, 2014
- Samuel Relton and Natasa Strabic: Modern Directions in Matrix Analysis and Applications at the 4th IMA Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimisation, Birmingham, Sept 3-5, 2014
Visitors
Vedran Sego visited the group throughout 2014.
Zhi-Gang Jia from Jiangsu Normal University, China, visited the group August 2013-July 2014.
Philip Gill (UC San Diego) and Margaret Wright (New York University) both visited for two weeks in March.
Jan Papež, a PhD student at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, visited for a week in November.
Marcel Schweitzer, a PhD student at the Universit of Wuppertal, visited the group for one week in September 2014.
Vladimir Druskin (Schlumberger-Doll Research Center, Cambridge, USA) visited the group for one week in June 2014.
Daniel Ruprecht (Università della Svizzera Italiana) and Robert Speck (Jülich Supercomputing Centre) visited the group for one week in February 2014.
Massimiliano Fasi, an M.Sc. student at the University of Bologna, Italy, visited for a week in November. He will join the group as a PhD student in September 2015, funded by a University of Manchester President’s Doctoral Scholarship Award.
Caterina Fenu, a PhD student at the University of Cagliari, Italy, visited for a week in November.
Knowledge Transfer
In The Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Sabisu, involving KTP Associate Tim Butters, Stefan Guettel, Nick Higham, and Jon Shapiro (School of Computer Science), an alarm management system has been developed and launched as a product.
Recognition and Service
Françoise Tisseur was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2014-2019) to support her work on the numerical solution of nonlinear eigenvalue problems.
Former PDRA Yuji Nakatsukasa (2011-2013) was awarded the Householder Prize 2014 for his PhD thesis “Algorithms and Perturbation Theory for Matrix Eigenvalue Problems and the Singular Value Decomposition” (2011), written at the University of California, Davis.
Nick Higham served on Subpanel 10, Mathematical Sciences, in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014.
Françoise Tisseur served as
- Vice-President of the UK & Republic of Ireland SIAM Section,
- Program Director of the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra,
- Member of the Householder Prize Committee 2014.
Nick Higham 
Impressive.