Presenter

Omar Ghattas is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and holds the Cockrell Chair in Engineering. He is also Principal Faculty and Director of the OPTIMUS Center in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. Before moving to UT Austin in 2005, he spent 16 years on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on theory and algorithms for large-scale inverse and optimization problems governed by models of complex engineered and natural systems, with focus on Bayesian inverse problems, Bayesian optimal experimental design, and stochastic optimal control and design. He is a two-time winner of the ACM Gordon Bell Prize, a recipient of the SIAM Geosciences Career Prize and the SIAM Babuška Prize, and a Fellow of SIAM and USACM. He holds BSE (civil and environmental engineering) and MS and PhD (computational mechanics) degrees from Duke University.