Special Section: 2014 Copper Mountain Conference

Abstract

The Thirteenth Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods was held April 6--11, 2014, in Copper Mountain, Colorado. The meeting featured approximately 130 talks covering a wide range of topics in scientific computing, including multigrid methods, domain decomposition, Krylov and Anderson accelerators, hybrid direct/iterative methods, iterative regularization of inverse problems, nonlinear solvers, algorithms for eigenvalue computations, and iterative methods in optimization. Numerous talks dealt with applications of iterative solvers to fields such as neutronics, image processing, graph mining, quantum chemistry, fluid flow, and wave propagation. Several sessions featured work on the use of iterative methods for solving coupled multiphysics problems arising in magnetohydrodynamics, atmospheric and ocean modeling, continuum mechanics, and so forth. Other presentations offered an overview of recent progress on resilient iterative methods, including work on stochastic solvers and fault-tolerant multigrid variants. As in the past, there were additional talks addressing various discretization methods for partial differential equations and their impact on the performance of iterative solvers. An encouraging sign for the future of the field was the strong student presence, accounting for over a third of the attendees. One of the high points of the Copper Mountain Conference is the traditional Student Paper Award Competition, which this year received an especially high number of very strong submissions. The Student Paper Award Committee charged with the selection of the best student papers had a very difficult job to do but eventually identified four entries deserving of recognition. A plenary session was devoted to the presentations by the four student winners: Jessica Bosch from the Max Planck Institute in Magdeburg, Germany (first place), Sarah Gaaf from the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Scott Ladenheim from Temple University, and Manda Winlaw from Cornell University (the latter three tied for second place). All four speakers gave excellent presentations. It should be stressed that this is the only plenary session at Copper Mountain, all other talks being organized in parallel sessions. This is done in order to give all conference participants the possibility to enjoy the winning student presentations. Michele Benzi (Emory University) and Ray Tuminaro (Sandia National Laboratories) served as conference co-chairs, while Ira Livshits chaired the Student Paper Award Committee. Management services were provided by Annette Anthony of Front Range Scientific Computations, Inc. The Conference gratefully acknowledges financial support from the US Department of Energy, the US National Science Foundation, IBM, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Emory University. The Copper Mountain Conference is organized in cooperation with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and with the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). Submissions to this special section were open to the scientific community, as advertised in advance on web sites of the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) and the Copper Mountain Conference. The 28 papers in this section serve to illustrate the vitality and continuing importance of the ongoing research on iterative methods for a wide variety of areas of applied mathematics and computational science. The guest editorial board worked very hard to ensure a rigorous peer-review process while meeting deadlines. We owe special thanks to Mitch Chernoff (SIAM Publications Manager) and Brittni Holland (SIAM Editorial Associate) for their efforts on this special section. Guest Associate Editors: Xiao-Chuan Cai, Iain Duff, Howard Elman, Kirk Jordan, Tim Kelley, Misha Kilmer, Dana Knoll, Sven Leyffer, Ira Livshits, Tom Manteuffel, Steve McCormick, Luke Olson, John Shadid, David Silvester, Ray Tuminaro, Homer Walker, Carol Woodward, Irad Yavneh