Layne T. Watson

Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics
(540) 231-7540

ltw@cs.vt.edu

Education:

Ph.D., 1974, Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
B.A., 1969, Psychology, University of Evansville.

Current Research Interests:

Numerical analysis; nonlinear programming; mathematical software; solid mechanics; fluid mechanics; image processing; parallel computation; bioinformatics.

Recent Research Grants and Contracts:

NASA. "Variable-complexity multidisciplinary optimization on parallel computers" (with B. Grossman, R. T. Haftka, and W. H. Mason). 1993-96, $599,521.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research. "Innovative local-global methods for wing structural design" (with Z. Gurdal and R. T. Haftka). 1999-2001, $509,219.
NSF. "A collaborative problem solving environment for modeling of broadband wireless communication systems" (with T. S. Rappaport, D. G. Kafura, N. Ramakrishnan, C. A. Shaffer, and W. Tranter). 1999-2003, $1,000,000.
NSF. "A microarray experiment management system" (with N. Ramakrishnan, R. Alscher, L. S. Heath, and J. W. Weller). 2001-04, $600,000.
DARPA. "The eukaryotic cell cycle as a test case for modeling cellular regulation in a collaborative problem solving environment" (with J. J. Tyson, J. C. Sible, K. C. Chen, C. A. Shaffer, and N. Ramakrishnan). 2001-06, $2,442,400.

Professional Activities:

Associate Editor: SIAM Journal on Optimization, ORSA Journal on Computing, Computational Optimization and Applications, Evolutionary Optimization, Engineering Computations, International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications.
Referee: Communications of the ACM; ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software; IEEE Computer; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics; Journal of Operations Research; Mathematical Programming; SIAM Review; SIAM Journal on Optimization; Numerical Methods in Fluids; Journal of Applied Mechanics; Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing; and Parallel Computing, among others.
Member: SIAM, SIAM Activity Groups on Computational Science and Engineering, Linear Algebra, Optimization, and Supercomputing, IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, ACM, SIGNUM.

Awards and Honors:

Member, Phi Kappa Phi, Blue Key, Psi Chi, Kappa Mu Epsilon, Phi Beta Chi, Sigma Chi, and Upsilon Pi Epsilon.
Special Year Lecturer, 1981, University of Maryland.
Fellow of the IEEE.
Best Paper Award, Sixth AIAA/NASA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization.
Alumni Award for Excellence in Research.
DARPA BioSPICE Special Recognition Award.
First Place George Marra Award for Excellence in Writing, Society for Wood Science and Technology.
Fellow of The National Institute of Aerospace.

Other Professional Experience:

1995-96 Departments of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, and Mathematics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.
1985-86 Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Industrial and Operations Engineering, and Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
1984 Applied Mathematics Division, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM.
1975-78 Department of Mathematics, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
1969-75 Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
1969-78 Computer Systems Consultant, Wright, Griffin, Davis, & Co., CPA's, Ypsilanti, MI.

Selected Publications:

B. B. Lowekamp, L. T. Watson, and M. S. Cramer, "The cellular automata paradigm for the parallel solution of heat transfer problems", Parallel Alogrithms Appl., 9 (1996) 119-130.
S. Burgee, A. A. Giunta, V. Balabanov, B. Grossman, W. H. Mason, R. Narducci, R. T. Haftka, and L. T. Watson, "A coarse grained parallel variable-complexity multidiscplinary optimization paradigm", Internat. J. Supercomputer Appl. High Performance Comput., 10 (1996) 296-299.
L. T. Watson, M. Sosonkina, R. C. Melville, A. P. Morgan, and H. F. Walker, "Algorithm 777: HOMPACK90: A suite of FORTRAN 90 codes for globally convergent homotopy algorithms", ACM Trans. Math. Software, 23 (1997) 514-549.
A. P. Morgan, L. T. Watson, and R. A. Young, "A Gaussian derivative based version of JPEG for image compression and decompression", IEEE Trans. Image Processing, 7 (1998) 1311-1320.
J. F. Rodriguez, J. E. Renaud, and L. T. Watson, "Convergence of trust region augmented Lagrangian methods using variable fidelity approximation data", Structural Optim., 15 (1998) 141-156.
D. T. Krasteva, L. T. Watson, C. Baker, B. Grossman, W. H. Mason, and R. T. Haftka, "Distributed control parallelism in multidisciplinary aircraft design", Concurrency: Pract. Exper., 11 (1999) 435--459.
S. M. Wise, A. J. Sommese, and L. T. Watson, "Algorithm 801: POLSYS_PLP: A partitioned linear product homotopy code for solving polynomial systems of equations", ACM Trans. Math. Software, 26 (2000) 176--200.
L. T. Watson, "Theory of globally convergent probability-one homotopies for nonlinear programming", SIAM J. Optim., 11 (2000) 761--780.
A. Goel, C. A. Baker, C. A. Shaffer, B. Grossman, W. H. Mason, L. T. Watson, and R. T. Haftka, "VizCraft: a problem solving environment for configuration design of a high speed civil transport", Comput. Sci. Engrg., 3 (2001) 56--66.

My work is at the interface of computer science, mathematics, and engineering. The overall goal is to provide sophisticated mathematical software, justified by rigorous mathematical analysis, to attack significant practical engineering and scientific problems. The HOMPACK project was designed to make mathematically obscure homotopy methods available to the typical engineer, and to provide production quality software to the user community. HOMPACK is now in use at hundreds of sites from Australia to Yugoslavia, and it has been successfully applied to problems in fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, composite materials, chemical engineering, economics, biology, robotics, computer vision, optimal control, circuit design, and nonlinear optimization.

Over the years, I have done mathematical analyses in the areas of approximation theory, homotopy theory, optimization, nonlinear equations, and computer vision. Recently, my focus has been on the application of parallel computation to large scale, interdisciplinary engineering problems, and to bioinformatics.