Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminars |
Events During the Week of January 25th through February 1st, 2026
Monday, January 26th, 2026
- Efficiently Learning Linear System Solvers for Fast Numerical Simulation
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: EH 1227
- Speaker: Professor Misha Khodak , University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Abstract: Accelerating PDE solving is an important emerging AI application, but popular approaches that fully replace classical solvers using neural networks often struggle to compete due to insufficient data, optimization issues, low precision, and a lack of guarantees. We consider the alternative paradigm of integrating learning directly into solvers, focusing specifically on initial value PDEs, for which the main computational cost is often solving a sequence of linear systems. We introduce PCGBandit, a lightweight online learning algorithm that has performance guarantees under practically reasonable distributional assumptions on the linear systems' target vectors, and implement it in the popular open-source software OpenFOAM. In evaluations across six different settings, including two MHD simulations, PCGBandit yields significant wallclock reductions while inheriting the classical solvers' precision and correctness. Lastly, we highlight several future directions for analyzing scientific computing via the lens of learning theory/online algorithms and for further data-driven impact on numerical simulation.
Tuesday, January 27th, 2026
- No events scheduled
Wednesday, January 28th, 2026
- No events scheduled
Thursday, January 29th, 2026
- No events scheduled
Friday, January 30th, 2026
- No events scheduled