Cluster focus

Computational Sciences is an interdisciplinary group connecting abstract mathematics, computer sciences and electrical engineering designed to solve complex problems in the physical sciences. For example, the cluster works as a team and with others in the fields of signal processing for wireless communications, face-recognition systems to improve national-security screenings, security coding for Web-based credit card transactions, and non-linear optimization software to improve cancer radiation treatments and weather forecasting programs. The cluster faculty have built important bridges among their three home departments (mathematics, electrical engineering and computer science) and provide a connection for students and faculty using interdisciplinary techniques to solve long-standing security and technological problems.

Cluster accomplishments

  • Cluster faculty are instrumental in a one-half-million-dollar interdisciplinary grant with computer scientists and electrical engineers to develop face-recognition techniques that could used for national security and law enforcement purposes. Cluster faculty are also collaborating on a signal-processing optimization research project.
  • The cluster organizes and sponsors the Computational Sciences Lecture Series, hosting workshops on topics ranging from quantum computation to wireless communications. During each workshop, three prominent scholars are brought to campus who discuss diverse approaches to the topic based on their different disciplinary perspectives. On average, 100 to 200 students and faculty attend each of these workshops. The cluster faculty hope these workshops will help them develop a book on frontiers in computational sciences. The cluster also created an online video repository of the workshops, allowing people across the globe to share in the outreach activities of the cluster.
  • Cluster faculty are teaching new courses that draw advanced students from across the physical sciences, including a course in Applied Algebra. Two of the cluster faculty also lead the Communications and Signal Processing Group for students in Electrical Engineering to study signal processing.
  • Cluster faculty regularly contribute to ongoing outreach efforts, including the Wisconsin Mathematics, Engineering and Science Talent Search, a statewide high school math competition where winning students come to UW-Madison to learn how scholars in different fields use math to achieve new technological advances.

Cluster structure

Computational sciences faculty share the responsibilities of designing their workshops and regularly rotate coordination responsibilities. Cluster faculty frequently collaborate on research projects and regularly meet over informal lunches, as well as maintaining regular e-mail communications about cluster-related issues.

Cluster coordinator, faculty and lead dean

Cluster Coordinator

  • Nigel Boston, Professor departments of Mathematics, and Electrical and Computer Engineering

Cluster Faculty

Lead Dean