Prof. Alejandro L. Garcia

Dept. Physics & Astronomy, San Jose State University

Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering, Berkeley Lab

For over sixty years Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) has been the dominant numerical method for the simulation of rarefied gases. DSMC is often thought of as a design tool for aerospace and nanofluidic applications. However, a number of important fluid dynamics results were either first discovered or first verified in DSMC simulations. This talk will present a brief outline of DSMC followed by a discussion of five surprising results obtained from Direct Simulation Monte Carlo.

BIO: Prof. Alejandro Garcia’s research is in the fields of fluid mechanics and non-equilibrium thermal physics with specializations in numerical simulations and stochastic processes. He has published over 100 journal articles with more than half of them involving the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo algorithm. Since 2003 he has co-organized the biennial DSMC workshop, most recently held last year in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Prof. Garcia is also a textbook author (Numerical Methods for Physics) and a consultant for the movie industry with screen credit on several films by DreamWorks Animation.