The dynamics of laboratory and space plasmas are often driven by potentially uncertain values of physical parameters. For this reason, the utilization of computational methods to quantify such uncertainty represents an important tool to understand how certain physical phenomena depend upon fluctuations in the values of these parameters. In this direction, I'll discuss the construction and implementation of new computational methods, called active subspace methods, to quantify the induced uncertainty within the (linear) stability/instability rates generated by perturbations in a collisionless plasma near spatially homogeneous equilibria.

BIO: Steve Pankavich is a Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Colorado School of Mines, where he has served as a faculty member for 11 years. He earned a PhD in Mathematical Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University and was a Zorn Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University. Prior to joining Mines, he also held a faculty position at the United States Naval Academy. His main interests lie in the modeling, analysis, and computation of physical problems modeled by partial differential equations, with applications to plasma physics, hydrology, and disease dynamics.