Prof. J. Tinsley Oden of UT Austin Delivers The Annual Ted Belytschko Lecture on Predictability of Coarse-Grain Models of Atomistic Systems in the Presence of Uncertainty on October 14, 2014
The Belytschko lecture honors Ted's legacy of mentorship and brilliant contributions to the field of computational mechanics. A member of Northwestern’s faculty since 1977, Belytschko was a central figure in the McCormick community and an internationally renowned researcher who made major contributions to the field of computational structural mechanics.
One of the most cited researchers in engineering science, Belytschko developed explicit finite element methods that are widely used in crashworthiness analysis and virtual prototyping in the auto industry. He received numerous honors, including membership in the US National Academy of Engineering, US National Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a founding director of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics, and in 2012, the association named a medal in his honor. The ASME Applied Mechanics Award was renamed the ASME Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Division Award in November 2007. Belytschko also served as editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and coauthor of the books Nonlinear Finite Elements for Continua and Structures and A First Course in Finite Elements.
Many techniques that Belytschko developed throughout his career changed the way engineers design structures. Some of his greatest contributions to the field of mechanical engineering were the explicit finite element methods that have been widely used in large deformation analysis and virtual prototyping.
Prof. J. Tinsley Oden of UT Austin delivered the second annual Ted Belytschko lecture on Predictability of Coarse-Grain Models of Atomistic Systems in the Presence of Uncertainty on October 14, 2014. Dr. John Tinsley Oden is Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin. It has been a common practice in molecular dynamics simulations of atomic systems, extending over many decades, to aggregate collections of atoms into molecular beads to reduce the number of degrees of freedom to sizes manageable on contemporary computer hardware. Such so-called coarse-grained models are used throughout computational chemistry, biology, and material science, and a very large literature exists on results of computer simulations obtained using such models. But, are such models always valid approximations of atomistic systems, especially in view of many uncertainties in model selection and data? This exposition addresses the general questions of selection, calibration, validation, and uncertainty quantification in multiscale models of atomistic systems. A Bayesian framework is presented and new algorithms are described for coarse-grained model selection and validation. The concepts of model plausibility, model evidence, entropy-based priors, parameter sensitivities, and an adaptive algorithm designed around an interpretation of Occam’s Razor are discussed, together with applications to typical atomistic systems in thermodynamic equilibrium.
Below are few photos that were taken at the dinner reception, which also included brief light hearted remarks by various colleagues fondly remembering and honoring Ted.
