Year 1 timetable

Title: Probabilistic Logic for Creating Virtual Populations
Speaker: Hussein Rappel

Abstract: Real-world phenomena are inherently associated with uncertainties. To enable trustworthy predictions, accurate risk assessments, and optimal decision-making, it is essential to address these uncertainties. However, quantifying them often requires extensive simulations based on samples drawn from the underlying population.

In many cases—such as with newly developed materials or rare climate events—only a limited number of samples are available, making this a significant challenge. Since these phenomena typically exhibit spatial characteristics, random fields can naturally be used to generate a virtual population.

In this talk, I will discuss the use of random fields and probabilistic logic to create virtual specimens, with a focus on their application to metal foams and their struts. Furthermore, since these virtual specimens must be physically viable, I will present the use of the copula theorem to ensure their physical consistency

Bio: Dr. Hussein Rappel is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to US Associate Professor) in Computational Engineering at the Department of Engineering University of Exeter. He did his Ph.D. in Computational Sciences at the University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg) as a member of the Legato Team and at the University of Liege (Belgium) as a member of the Computational & Multi-scale Mechanics of Materials (CM3) unit. Prior to joining the University of Exeter, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Alan Turing Institute and a member of the Computational Statistics and Machine Learning Group (CSML) at the University of Cambridge. Broadly speaking, Dr. Rappel is interested in probabilistic and statistical modeling and their intersection with engineering problems. A list of his publications can be found here ==> the link.