PhD in Mathematics: High Performance Computing for Geo- and Astrophysics

Location: Streatham Campus, University of Exeter, EX4 4QJ

Project Description:
The Centre for Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics at Exeter is one of the leading research groups of its kind in the UK. Our research encompasses the Fluid Dynamics of Weather and Climate, Theoretical Fluid Dynamics, Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, Solar-Terrestrial Plasmas and Space Weather. We invite applications to study for a fully-funded PhD starting in Sept 2016.

The simulations of realistic geo- and astrophysical processes have a strong demand on computational requirements. High-performance computers (HPC) are therefore mandatory to run such simulations within a reasonable time. Additionally, efficient implementations on HPC architectures are currently faced with a significant change in the computing architectures towards massive parallelism. This forces redesigning the algorithms to assure that they are able to run efficiently on millions of computing cores which is a non-trivial task. Therefore, a co-design involving knowledge on mathematics as well as future HPC architectures is required, hence located in an interdisciplinary field.

Various topics for an HPC-focussed PhD project (in mathematics and computer science) are available: e.g. HPC optimizations of weather and oceanic simulations, parallelization-in-time with focus on weather and climate simulations, solar tomography, etc.

The PhD candidate should have strong knowledge and understanding of parallel programming models (MPI/OpenMP), HPC computing architectures (CPU/GPU/XeonPhi) as well as strong knowledge on scientific computing (Linear algebra, time-depending PDE solvers, etc.).

Academic Entry Requirements:
Applicants should have or expect to achieve at least a 2:1 Honours degree, or equivalent, in Maths, Physics, Natural Sciences or other numerate discipline. Interviews will take place 9th March 2016.