Numerical Linear Algebra Group Activities 2021
The Numerical Linear Algebra Group had a busy year in 2021, despite the pandemic limiting our travel. 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; see also these news stories about our publications.
Software
Nick Higham and Manta Mikaitis released Anymatrix: a MATLAB toolbox that provides an extensible collection of matrices, organized in groups, with the ability to search the collection by matrix properties. See this blog post by Nick and this blog post by Mantas.
We make our research codes available as open source, principally on GitHub; see the repositories of Connolly, Fasi, Higham, Liu, Mikaitis, Pranesh, Zounon.
We also put MATLAB software on MATLAB Central File Exchange and on our own web sites, e.g., the Rational Krylov Toolbox (RKToolbox).
PhD Students
We welcomed new PhD students Ayana Mussabayeva and Alban Bloor Riley.
Thomas McSweeney (Scheduling with Precedence Constraints in Heterogeneous Parallel Computing) and Gian Maria Negri Porzio (Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problems: Theory and Algorithms) successfully defended their PhD dissertations.
Today I have defended my PhD thesis and passed my viva, marking the end of my PhD career at @ManUniMaths. I deeply thank my supervisor @tisseurf for her mentoring during these years, and all the other members of the @nla_grp: they are the best people I have ever met and… 1/2— SIAM (@TheSIAMNews) September 30, 2021
Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs)
Srikara Pranesh left the group in October 2021 and is now working at V-Labs in Bengaluru. He joined us in 2017 to work on the NLAFET (Parallel Numerical Linear Algebra for Extreme Scale Systems) project and then moved onto the ICONIC project.
Mawussi Zounon left the group in June 2021 to become a senior software engineer at Arm Manchester. He joined us in 2016 to work on the NLAFET project. At the end of the NLAFET project, he continued working with the Numerical Linear Algebra Group as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) associate, in partnership with NAG. The KTP, which ended in June 2021, was deemed “Outstanding” by the KTP Grading Panel for its achievement in meeting the KTP Objectives.
Ian McInerney joined the group in December 2021, having completed his PhD in the High Performance Embedded and Distributed Systems (HiPEDS) Centre for Doctoral Training at Imperial College, London, under the supervision of Eric Kerrigan and George Constantinides.
Grants
Nick Higham and Françoise Tisseur received funding for work on multi-precision algorithms from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under the Exascale Computing Project.
Françoise Tisseur received EPSRC funding to work on mixed precision symmetric eigensolvers.
Presentations at Conference and Workshops
SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (virtual), March 1-5: Connolly, Fasi, Higham, Mikaitis, Pranesh, Tisseur.
SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra (virtual), May 17-21: Fasi, Liu.
New Directions in Numerical Linear Algebra and High Performance Computing (virtual) July 7-8, 2021: Hammarling, Higham, Tisseur.
SIAM Annual Meeting 2021(virtual), July 19-23: Connolly, Fasi, Higham, Mary, and Pranesh.
A panel at #SIAMAN21 offered strategies to facilitate the process of #writing and #publishing a book. Read about the techniques of successful authors and the advantages of publishing with SIAM in this month’s issue of SIAM News! sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/a— SIAM (@TheSIAMNews) September 20, 2021
IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2021, Auckland, New Zealand (virtual), December 7-10: Chen
Conference and Workshop Organization
Stefan Güttel continued to co-organize the E-NLA online seminar series dedicated to topics in Numerical Linear Algebra.
Nick Higham organized a minisymposium on Reduced Precision Arithmetic and Stochastic Rounding at the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, March 1-4, 2021.
Theo Mary and Srikara Pranesh organised a two-part minisymposium on Mixed Precision Algorithms for High Performance Scientific Computingr at the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, March 1-5, 2021.
Massimiliano Fasi and Xiaobo Liu organised a two-part minisymposium on Computing Functions of Matrices at the SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra, May 17-21, 2021.
Sven Hammarling, Nick Higham and Françoise Tisseur organized the New Directions in Numerical Linear Algebra and High Performance Computing workshop which was held virtually on July 7-8, 2021, celebrating the 70th birthday of Jack Dongarra. Videos from the workshop are available here.
Rob Corless and Nick Higham organized a two-part minisymposium Bohemian Matrices and Applications at the SIAM Annual Meeting (virtual), July 2021.
Nick Higham and Sri Pranesh organized a two-part minisymposium Computational Frontiers in Numerical Linear Algebra at the SIAM Annual Meeting (virtual), July 2021.
Max Fasi was on the organizing committee of the the 9th Matrix Equations and Tensor Techniques Workshop, 9-10 September 2021 in Perugia, Italy.
Recognition and Service
Nick Higham was been named a 2020 ACM Fellow.
Stefan Güttel was awarded the 2021 James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing.
Attending the 2021 James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing Lecture titled “Rational Krylov: A Toolkit for Scientific Computing” by Stefan Güttel of University of Manchester? Tune in today at 11:30 am CST. meetings.siam.org/sess/dsp_progr #SIAMCSE21— SIAM (@TheSIAMNews) March 4, 2021
Nick Higham received the George Pólya Prize for Mathematical Exposition from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).
SIAM has announced the 18 recipients of prestigious prizes that will be awarded at the SIAM Annual Meeting, taking place virtually July 19-23, 2021. #SIAMAN21 Learn More: sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/d— SIAM (@TheSIAMNews) July 14, 2021
Nick Higham was awarded the 2022 Hans Schneider Prize by the International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS).
Nick Higham (@nhigham) from the University of Manchester (@OfficialUoM) receives the 2022 Hans Schneider Prize for his fundamental contributions in the analysis of a wide range of numerical linear algebra problems and matrix functions.
— SIAM (@TheSIAMNews) October 19, 2021
External Members
Max Fasi took up a Lectureship in Computer Science at Durham University in October 2021.
Numerical Linear Algebra Group 