Dr. Bjorn Engquist

Biography

Björn Engquist is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Computational Applied Mathematics Chair. He earned his Ph.D. in numerical analysis from Uppsala University in 1975. Throughout his career, Engquist has held significant academic positions, including professorships at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Princeton University, and has served as the Michael Henry Stater University Professor of Mathematics and Applied Computational Mathematics. He was the director of the Research Institute for Industrial Applications and the Scientific Computing Centre for Parallel Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2004, Engquist joined the University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as the director of the Center for Numerical Analysis within the Oden Institute. His research focuses on the development, analysis, and application of numerical methods for differential equations, including the development of absorbing boundary conditions, homogenization theory, and nonlinear high-resolution schemes for compressible fluid dynamics. Engquist has made significant contributions to computational multiscale methods and fast numerical algorithms for wave propagation, with applications in seismology. Over his career, he has received numerous honors and awards and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He was awarded the SIAM James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing in 1982, the Peter Henrici Prize in 2011, and the George David Birkhoff Prize in 2012.

Research Interests