Caira Anderson

  • Program Year: 1
  • Academic Institution: Cornell University
  • Field of Study: Applied Mathematics
  • Academic Advisor: David Bindel
  • Practicum(s): Practicum Not Yet Completed
  • Degree(s):
    B.A. Mathematics and Statistics, Smith College, 2020

Summary of Research

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is used to model magnetic confinement of plasma for nuclear fusion. Stellarators are the only modern magnetic confinement fusion devices that are characteristically operable at steady state due to their non-axisymmetric (3D) equilibria. However, stability analysis of their equilibria is inhibited by the complicated eigenspectrum of the ideal MHD force operator because solving for its mixture of continuous eigenspectra and discrete eigenvalues is computationally expensive and vulnerable to complex numerical error when using typical methods on HPC systems. I plan to develop symmetry-adapted Lanczos (SAL) methods to locate and compute the continuous eigenspectra and discrete eigenvalues of this force operator independently, symmetry class by symmetry class. This work will allow us to (1) reduce computational cost by solving smaller sub-problems, (2) eliminate the effects of complex numerical error, and (3) efficiently exploit HPC resources. By developing SAL methods for HPC systems, we can expedite the realization of nuclear fusion as a premier renewable energy source. In addition, the SAL methods that I develop will be useful to compare with the spectrum slicing based solvers that are currently being investigated for various DOE projects in areas such as computational chemistry, where some operators have a similarly complicated eigenspectrum.

Publications

William F. Godoy, Pedro Valero-Lara, Caira Anderson, Katrina W. Lee, Ana Gainaru,
Rafael Ferreira Da Silva, and Jeffrey S. Vetter. 2023. Julia as a unifying end-to-end workflow language on the Frontier exascale system. In Proceedings of the SC '23 Workshops of The International Conference on High Performance Computing, Network, Storage, and Analysis (SC-W '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1989–1999. https://doi.org/10.1145/3624062.3624278
Anderson, C. (2023, Nov. 12-17). My experience with Julia as a novice scientific code developer and HPC user [Presentation]. Julia for HPC Birds of a Feather session at SC23, Denver, CO, USA. https://github.com/JuliaParallel/julia-hpc-bof-sc23.

Anderson, C., Susa I., Tania N. (2019, Sept. 12). Modeling Producer-Scrounger Behavior [Presentation]. Smith College Mathematics & Statistics Department Lunch Colloquium, Northampton, MA, USA.

Anderson, C., Susa I., Tania N. (2019, July 23). Modeling Producer-Scrounger Behavior [Presentation]. University of Massachusetts Amherst REU Conference, Amherst, MA, USA.

Del Guercio, O., Anderson, C. (2019, Mar. 23). Invariants of Colored Knots [Presentation]. Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, Northampton, MA, USA.
Anderson C. (Presenter), Godoy W.F., Valero-Lara P., Lee K. W., Gainaru A., Ferreira da Silva R., Vetter, J. F. (2023, Nov. 12-17). Exploring Julia as a unifying end-to-end workflow language for HPC on Frontier [Research Posters session]. SC23, Denver, CO, USA.

Anderson, C., Wright A., Bindel D., Faber B. (2023, Oct. 30-Nov. 3). Progress on a solver for ideal MHD stability in stellarators [Poster session]. APS DPP Meeting, Denver, CO, USA.

Anderson, C., Wright A., Bindel D., Faber B. (2023, July 25-29). Progress on a solver for ideal MHD stability in stellarators [Poster session]. JuliaCon, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Anderson, C., Wright A., Bindel D., Faber B. (2023, May 8-10). Progress on a solver for ideal MHD stability in stellarators [Poster session]. Sherwood Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA.

Anderson, C., Wright A., Bindel D., Faber B. (2022, Oct. 17-21). Progress on a solver for ideal MHD stability in stellarators [Poster session]. APS DPP Meeting, Spokane, WA, USA.

Anderson, C., Wright A. M., Bindel D., Faber B. (2022, Sept. 8-10). Progress on a solver for ideal MHD stability in stellarators [Poster session]. GEM Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ, USA.

Anderson, C., Hudson S. R. (2021, Nov. 8-12). Modifying the Geometry of Stellarator Coils [Poster session]. APS DPP Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Anderson, C., Hudson S. R. (2021, Sept. 9-11). Modifying the Geometry of Stellarator Coils [Poster session]. GEM Annual Conference, Houston, TX, USA.

Anderson, C., Susa I., Tania N. (2019, Sept. 21). Modeling Producer-Scrounger Behavior [Poster session]. Women in Mathematics in New England (WIMIN), Northampton, MA, USA.

Anderson, C., Susa I., Tania N. (2019, July 31-Aug. 3). Modeling Producer-Scrounger Behavior [Poster session]. MAA MathFest, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Awards

Recipient of SC23 WORKS Best Paper Award, 2023.

Research Poster accepted into SC23, 2023.

Recipient of SC23 Student Volunteer Award, 2023.

Recognized as GEM PhD University Fellow of Cornell University, 2023.

Graduate School Dean's Scholar, Cornell University, 2023.

GEM Annual Conference Technical Presentation Competition Finalist, 2021.

Recipient of GEM PhD Full Fellowship, 2021.

Recipient of Walter Lowenstern Jr. Fellowship, Rice University, 2020.

Recipient of the Mathematics & Statistics Department Sperry Prize for Exceptional Departmental Leadership, Smith College, 2020.

Elected Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society for demonstrated promise in research, Smith College, 2020.

Recipient of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) MathFest Janet L. Andersen Prize in recognition of outstanding achievement in mathematical and computational biology, 2019.

Recipient of the Mathematics & Statistics Department Suzan Rose Benedict Prize for a Sophomore who most excels in Mathematics, Smith College 2018.

Smith College Dean's List, 2016-2017, 2017-2018.

Recipient of Smith College Presidential Scholarship, 2016-2020.