Stephen A. Vavasis

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Professor (PhD, Stanford, 1989)
Department of Computer Science
493 Rhodes Hall (Mailing address: 4130 Upson Hall)
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

Steve Vavasis moved to University of Waterloo on Sep. 1, 2006. This webpage is no longer maintained

email: vavasis@cs.cornell.edu

Vavasis's CV (last updated 8/19/05)

Courses

In the fall of 2005, I taught CS421, Numerical Analysis.

In the spring of 2006, I am teaching

Research and Publications

My research interest is numerical analysis. (You aren't sure what numerical analysis is? Please see the essay by L. N. Trefethen.) More specifically, I am interested in:

  • Numerical optimization and complexity issues
  • Numerical methods for boundary value problems
  • Geometric problems arising in scientific computing
  • Numerical linear algebra
I have a few recent manuscripts available on-line:

Applied Math

I am a member of the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell. This interdisciplinary center promotes applied math and is in charge of the Applied Math PhD program.

The QMG package

I have written a software package called QMG for mesh generation for the finite element method in three dimensions. QMG is available on an open-source basis by anonymous ftp. With QMG you can construct 3D geometric objects with very complicated topology (holes, internal boundaries, etc.) and automatically create an unstructured tetrahedral mesh for them. (The mesh generator is based on algorithmic work by Scott Mitchell and me.) You can also solve an elliptic boundary value problem (div (c*grad u)=f) on your domain. The package is written in C++ and Matlab and is distributed for free at the source-code level (anonymous ftp distribution began 5/5/95). It runs under Matlab and Tcl/Tk.

QMG 2.0 was released on 3 September 1999. The principal new feature in QMG 2.0 (compared to QMG 1.1) is its ability to handle curved boundaries.

Please see the on-line documentation.