We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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March 7, 2014

Speaker: Dr. Lucian Ivan, Computational Fluid Dynamics Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, University of Waterloo

Title: High-performance computational methods for partial differential equations (PDEs) with application to space-physics flows

Abstract: Accurate, efficient and scalable computational methods are highly desirable for large-scale scientific computing applications, especially for problems exhibiting spatial and temporal multi-resolution scales, non-trivial geometries and complex boundary conditions (BCs). For global magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) modelling of space-physics problems, high-performance approaches could significantly reduce the grid requirements, thereby enabling more affordable yet accurate predictions of large-scale space-weather phenomena. Key challenges encountered relate to providing solenoidal magnetic fields, accurate discretizations on spherical domains, capturing of MHD shocks, and implementing accurate BCs.

This talk gives an overview of a high-order finite-volume discretization procedure in combination with a parallel solution-adaptive algorithm for the numerical simulation of physically complex flows. The focus is on the challenges, development and application to conservation laws pertaining to space physics, in particular to MHD for space plasma flows. Discretization of spherical geometries is performed with cubed-sphere grids, which have recently gained popularity for simulations in a variety of application domains such as climate and weather modelling, and magna/mantle dynamics. Numerical results to demonstrate the accuracy and capability of the multidimensional high-order, solution-adaptive, cubed-sphere computational framework are presented. Extensions to unstructured grids and other applications are also discussed.