Mines receives $233K NSF grant to research plasma dynamics

Stephen Pankavich's research will include studying the validation of kinetic plasma models.
Stephen Pankavich's research will include studying the validation of kinetic plasma models. | Contributed photo

Colorado School of Mines' department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics has received $233,775 from the National Science Foundation.

The three-year grant will be used to develop new analytical and computational methods of solving mathematical problems in the kinetic theory of plasma dynamics.   

"One of the goals of this project is showing that these equations possess realistic solutions and to computationally approximate them so that we can accurately predict outcomes in future situations,” assistant professor Stephen Pankavich, the principal investigator for the project titled “Well-posedness and Behavior of Solutions to Kinetic Equations,” said. 

Pankavich's research will include studying the validation of kinetic plasma models, identification of special solutions, determination of their stability properties, and the computational approximation of their behavior by Particle-in-Cell and Discontinuous Galerkin methods.