UMass Mathematician Wei Zhu Secures Air Force Young Investigator Program Grant for Scientific Machine Learning Research
Wei Zhu, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMass, has been awarded a prestigious three-year, $450,000 Young Investigator grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The grant will support Zhu’s research into the application of scientific machine learning to model highly complex physical and engineering systems, such as turbulent fluid flows.
Zhu, who considers himself an applied and computational mathematician, is particularly interested in machine learning, data science, and the underlying mathematics. He aims to create reliable models with theoretical guarantees even when working with limited data.
Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, typically relies on extensive datasets for training models. However, when dealing with scenarios like predicting turbulence effects on an aircraft wing with limited data, traditional machine learning approaches may fall short. This is where scientific machine learning comes into play, combining physical and mathematical laws with empirical data for greater accuracy.
According to Zhu, the key is to integrate computational models with sparse data effectively to achieve reliable results while speeding up computation. Over the next three years, Zhu will focus on enhancing the computational efficiency of physical models while maintaining their adherence to fundamental laws.
The ultimate goal of the research is to develop models that not only perform effectively but also come with theoretical guarantees. Zhu emphasizes the importance of ensuring the reliability and performance of these models to address high-stakes scientific applications successfully.
