Alumnus John E. Evans’06 returned to RPI as a Strauch Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University Colorado Boulder and chair-elect of that department. His visit from October 14 to 16 was primarily sponsored by the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering (MANE), where he had conducted multiple research projects as a student, and was co-hosted by the Department of Mathematical Sciences, where he earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees.
Dr. Evans’s career path has been consistently on the interface of computational mathematics and aerospace engineering, as he designs and develops computational algorithms for the analysis and optimal design of mechanical systems. The breadth and depth of applied and computational mathematical course offerings and the undergraduate research opportunities offered by MANE enabled the future Dr. Evans to identify his career interest and prepare him to pursue a PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Dr. Thomas J. R. Hughes, one of the most distinguished faculty in computational mechanics.
Seated: Dr. John Evans with the MAA Prize winners for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling: Luke Daignault, Gabriel Weredyk, and Sameer Premji. Standing: Austin Hou and Austin Kilgore.
Dr. Evans’s visit to RPI featured a MANE seminar “The EXHUME Project: Democratizing Immersed and Meshless Finite Element Analysis,” in which he described software he developed to facilitate the use of immersed finite element methods for solving fluid equations in moving domains such as airflow past flexible wings and blood flow past heart valves. Additionally, Dr. Evans was generous enough with his time to engage directly with RPI students at various levels to share his career perspectives and experience. After his seminar, Dr. Evans went to lunch with graduate students in mathematical sciences pursuing doctoral research in computational mathematics. He also visited the undergraduate Numerical Computing class to share thoughts on career and education with students just beginning to learn about computational mathematics. Finally, Dr. Evans shared advice and perspective over dinner at Tara Kitchen with advanced undergraduate students and early graduate students with interest in computational mathematics and upcoming decisions concerning graduate school or industrial paths. Included in this dinner were the 2025 Mathematical Association of America Prize winners in the Mathematical and Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling. As a student, Dr. Evans had also received a top prize, his from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, in the same competition in 2005.
