LLNL’s Woodward, Hill elected to key SIAM leadership positions

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) announced the election of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory computational mathematician Carol Woodward as its president-elect and LLNL computational scientist Judy Hill as a council member for the organization.

SIAM is a renowned international community with more than 14,000 applied mathematicians, computational and data scientists, students, researchers, practitioners and educators from more than 100 countries. SIAM publishes 18 peer-reviewed journals, holds numerous conferences in applied and computational mathematics and aims to advance the application of mathematics and computational science to engineering, industry, science and society, according to the organization. As president-elect, Woodward will shadow the current SIAM president for the next calendar year before serving as president from Jan. 1, 2025 to Dec. 31, 2026. 

“Being given the opportunity to serve SIAM as president-elect, and later as president, is a tremendous honor,” Woodward said. “SIAM has long been a bedrock for applied mathematicians, providing crucial support, recognition and connections. As we confront new challenges — explosive growth in data science, shifts in computational science and financial complexities — I am committed to helping SIAM meet these challenges while maintaining its extremely high quality and successful activities. I plan to strengthen our journals, expand global connections and champion diversity. With collective support, we'll navigate these changes, ensuring SIAM remains the go-to hub for applied mathematics, embracing excellence and fostering a welcoming community." 

Woodward, a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at LLNL, was previously SIAM’s vice president-at large (2018-21) and a council member (2010-15). Woodward specializes in developing numerical methods for nonlinear partial differential equations, nonlinear and linear solvers, time integration methods, numerical software development and parallel computing. She is the project lead for the Exascale Computing Project (ECP)/FASTMath SciDAC Institute’s SUNDIALS package of time integrators and nonlinear solvers, which was awarded the prestigious 2023 SIAM/Association for Computing Machinery Prize in Computational Science and Engineering. Woodward also developed and implemented the variably saturated flow model in ParFlow, a numerical model that simulates the hydrologic cycle from the bedrock to the top of the plant canopy. The code is used worldwide for watershed simulation and climate analysis.

Hill joined LLNL in 2021 from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she led the Scientific Computing Group at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). She served as program manager for the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program at OLCF and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). While at ORNL, Hill also established and led ECP’s Application Integration effort aimed at leveraging existing application readiness efforts at the DOE Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research computing facilities. Hill is currently the chair of SIAM’s Computational Science and Engineering Activity Group and was previously the group’s program director (2021-2022) and secretary (2019-2020). 

At LLNL, Hill currently leads the El Capitan Center of Excellence, preparing National Nuclear Security Administration’s Tri-Lab code teams and their applications for the forthcoming exascale supercomputer El Capitan sited at LLNL. She specializes in the development, implementation and application of numerical methods for massively parallel computers to a variety of applications, including computational fluid dynamics, climate science and chemistry. As a SIAM council member, Hill hopes to champion ways that SIAM can increase its engagement with its current student members and chapters and raise awareness with future students.

"As a newly elected SIAM council member, I'm excited to contribute to advancing applied mathematics and computational science,” Hill said. “My focus includes enhancing engagement with current student members through increased conference participation, mentorship and professional involvement in student chapters. This will not only secure SIAM's future but will ensure that diverse perspectives shape our profession. I want to invest in our students today to ensure a dynamic tomorrow in applied mathematics."

For more, visit the SIAM website.