Undergraduate Research in Stochastic Optimization and Scientific Computing
We are looking for an undergraduate to continue advancing computational tools for optimization and design. The project has been advanced significantly by two previous undergraduates and has a good code base, but code development and enhancement will be a key part of the project. The goal is to optimize a system of scatterers related to material design in applications such as solar cells or the creation of translucent screens. The material properties of the scatterers are fixed, and we use Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques to optimize the locations of the scatterers in order to search of high contrast differences in scattered power over narrow bands of wavelengths of light. This is a challenging and computationally intense goal as the optimization is non-convex, but the models we have are graph based and computationally accessible.