This grant provides partial funding to support a scientific symposium on Uncertainty Quantification applied to Predictive Engineering and Sciences to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 1-5, 2011. It aims at fostering research collaboration between North and South American groups in the field. The format of the meeting is designed to stimulate scientific discussions targeting emerging uncertainty quantification areas and problems of fundamental and technological relevance. Industrial specialists will participate to expose their perspectives on related subjects. The symposium consists of two short courses on stochastic and statistical aspects of uncertainty quantification, about thirty five invited presentations and sufficient free time to allow interactions and collaborations between the participants. The short courses will allow participating graduate students and young researchers to understand fundamental mathematical and statistical aspects of uncertainty quantification. It will provide exposure and allow discussions on major engineering topics where uncertainty plays a key role in analysis and design.
This symposium will foster collaborative efforts between distinguished participants from the USA and South America. It will introduce young scientists and graduate students to an area of significant importance to predictive science. The scientific presentations of the participants are to be published in a peer reviewed journal. This meeting will lead to a lasting integration and collaboration of researchers around joint work-programs and in the strengthening of scientific and technological basis of the USA and Brazil. A comprehensive web site allows the meeting resources to be widely available, such as short course notes, presentations and invited papers - see URL: http://mpdc.mae.cornell.edu/Conferences/RioUQ2011
This NSF- grant supported travel expenses for organizing the 2011 USA/South America Symposium on Stochastic Modeling and Uncertainty Quantification in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The symposium embraced emerging topics on Uncertainty Quantification applied to Predictive Engineering Analysis and Design. It aimed at fostering research collaboration between North American and South American groups (mainly Brazilian but also with participation from Argentina and Chile). The symposium consisted from several plenary lectures, more than 35 invited presentations and three short courses. Sufficient free time was allocated for connections, interactions and potential collaborations. The tutorials were helpful for young researchers to understand the fundamental mathematical and statistical aspects of uncertainty quantification, establish a common knowledge basis for all participants and provide an exposure to major engineering areas where uncertainty plays a key role in analysis and design. The format of the meeting was designed to stimulate intensive scientific discussions targeting emerging uncertainty quantification areas and problems of fundamental and technological relevance. Industrial specialists were invited aiming at exposing their own needs and perspectives on related subjects. The main themes of the symposium were stochastic and statistical modeling of complex systemswith emphasis on Solution of High-Dimensional Stochastic PDEs Model Reduction of Stochastic PDEs Information Theoretic Approaches to Stochastic Multiscale/Multiphysics Modeling Bayesian Inference, Predictive Modeling and Model Selection Inference in Probabilistic Graphical Models of Complex Engineering Systems Applications in Science and Engineering All available presentations and notes of the meeting are available on the symposium web site at: http://mpdc.mae.cornell.edu/Conferences/RioUQ2011/ The speakers were invited to prepare full length scale papers for consideration by the Int. Journal for Uncertainty Quantification. Three special issues of the Journal have been already prepared and one more is on planning. The links for these special issues can be found on the journal web site at http://uncertainty-quantification.com/ The topics of the short courses delivered at the symposium include: Optimal Experimental Design for Complex Physical Systems: an Information-Theoretic Approach Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification in Scientific Computing Uncertainty Propagation - a Dynamical Systems Perspective The notes for these courses are available on the meeting web site. Several Brazilian students attended these courses and it is expected that their impact on future research in Brazil in this area will be significantly enhanced. A clear indication of this impact is the organization by Brazilian colleagues of their first Uncertainty Quantification meeting in 2012 called Uncertainties 2012 www.set.eesc.usp.br/uncertainties2012/ Several scientific interactions between the USA and South American participants are taken place and the impact of the meeting will be long lasting.
