Abstract

The pressing societal needs for protecting ecosystems and infrastructure against extreme climate events, restoring degrading waterways, and harvesting renewable energy from wind, waves and tides have given rise to challenging fluid flow problems in the water-energy-climate nexus.  Computational science has emerged as a powerful approach for tackling such problems.  By leveraging extreme-scale

supercomputers and integrating data from various sources with advanced computational tools it is now possible to simulate flow and sediment transport processes in real-life aquatic environments at unprecedented resolution.

Site-specific simulations at such scale can now be used to develop science-based approaches to stream and river restoration, understand

contaminant transport in waterways, simulate extreme inland and coastal flooding events and their impact on infrastructure, and optimize renewable energy harvesting devices from wind and water resources.  In my talk I will illustrate several such examples and present a vision for a simulation-based engineering science approach to sustainability.

C.V.

Fotis Sotiropoulos is the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) at Stony Brook University (SBU) as of October 2015. Prior to joining SBU Dr. Sotiropoulos was the James L. Record Professor of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering, and Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Prior to that, Dr. Sotiropoulos was on the faculty of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a joint appointment in the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.  His research focuses on simulation-based engineering science for fluid mechanics problems in renewable

energy, environmental, biological, and cardiovascular applications. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Sandia National Laboratories, private industry, and other state and federal agencies, Sotiropoulos has raised over $37M in externally-sponsored funds for research and research facility development and renovation. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), has authored over 170 peer reviewed journal papers and book chapters, has twice won the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Gallery of Fluid Motion (2009, 2011), and is also a recipient of a Career Award from the National Science Foundation. He is also a 2014 distinguished lecturer of the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies at Tel Aviv University and is serving or has served on the editorial boards of several journals.

Fotis

SOTIROPOULOS

Sustainability challenges in the water-energy-climate nexus:  the role of computational science

Università degli Studi di Genova

Scuola Politecnica di Ingegneria e Architettura

DICCA - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Chimica e Ambientale

Via Montallegro, 1 - 16145 Genova

Partita IVA 00754150100