WONAPDE 2024 finishes successfully

WONAPDE 2024 finishes successfully

The traditional conference on numerical analysis, is currently the most important in the world in this discipline.  

The Seventh Chilean Workshop on Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations (WONAPDE) 2024, organized by researchers from the Mathematical Engineering Research Center of the Universidad de Concepción (UdeC), and academics of this university, as well as from the U. del Bío-Bío (UBB) and the U. Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC), ended on Friday, January 19.  

As it has been the tradition since 2004, this international meeting brought together the world’s leading specialists in the field of Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations (NA of PDEs), an area of applied mathematics in which Concepción is a global reference thanks to the work developed by this group of researchers, who are also members of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the University of Chile. According to the international community, WONAPDE has become the most important in the field. 

Ten were the plenary speakers at the meeting, which also included 19 parallel sessions of talks on various physical problems and phenomena that come from different areas of knowledge and can be addressed through various mathematical modeling techniques, bringing together more than 200 participants, mostly from Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States, as well as countries as diverse as Brazil, Chine, Panama, Saudi Arabia and Sweden, among others.  

The opening ceremony was headed by the director of Research and Artistic Creation of the UdeC, Dr. Ronald Mennickent Cid, who pointed out that “if we take a look at history, we will realize that much of the progress of our civilization rests on the advancement of mathematical knowledge. Likewise, the great challenges we face as humanity will probably find answers in numerical solution algorithms of a mathematical nature”.

“The knowledge that we can acquire,” the authority added, “from the study of large databases in oceanography, climate, astronomy and health sciences, to cite a few examples, will be facilitated by the tools provided by mathematics, including the sophisticated system of partial differential equations”. 

On behalf of the WONAPDE 2024 organizing committee, Dr. Raimund Bürger pointed out that, although during the COVID-19 pandemic, meetings of this kind were not possible and the number of telematic events increased greatly, they were constantly consulted by colleagues from different parts of the world about when the next edition would be held. “For this reason, it is especially pleasing to have been able to hold this edition of WONAPDE with the record attendance of the entire series of meetings, 220 attendees from 25 different countries in America, Europe, Asia and Australia”, he said.

“We thank all the institutions and projects that made this event possible. These projects are located in our three universities and it is well known that, their researchers and students, we collaborate in different joint initiatives”, the also academic at UdeC emphasized.

In this sense, the organizing committee of WONAPDE is completed with Dr. Gabriel N. Gatica (UdeC) Dr. Manuel Solano Palma (UdeC, president of the committee), Dr. Ricardo Oyarzúa Vargas (UBB) and Dr. Jessika Camaño Valenzuela (UCSC), who emphasized that “as in previous WONAPDEs, we had very good level talks and different instances to be able to share”.     

“WONAPDE also stands out for being a congress with a good number of participants in the sense that it is not difficult for everyone to interact, thus generating a very pleasant and welcoming atmosphere”, she added.

Organizing Committee, from left to right: Raimund Bürger, Manuel Solano, Ricardo Oyarzúa, Jessika Camaño and Gabriel Gatica

International collaboration to advance and open up opportunities  

“By looking at the list of participants you can realize the high level of the conference. More than 200 talks presented the most recent advances of numerical analysis for PDEs”, mentioned Dr. Solano, president of the Organizing Committe. Moreover, he added “there is a key aspect that distinguishes WONAPDE from other conferences and allows participants to interact. The venue of the conference is strategically placed near auditoriums, and we have built a tent where the participants can have lunch and coffee. This is very important because collaborations and new ideas are generated in a relaxed environment. It was possible to see participants in the tent discussing ideas and working together”. Finally, Dr. Solano acknowledges the different entities from Universidad de Concepción that made possible the logistics in the organization: Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Desarrollo, and Dirección de Servicios of UdeC. 

WONAPDE 2024 closing plenary talk was given by Dr. Ricardo Ruiz-Baier, PhD at UdeC, current academic at Monash University (Australia), who has a long history of collaboration with his colleagues from the AN pole of EDPs in Concepción. “I grew up scientifically in Concepción and the WONAPDE was from the beginning a great inspiration for all of us as undergraduate and then graduate students of Mathematical Engineering”, the specialist in applications for mixed finite element, interface problems, couplings of multi-physics problems, explained.  

“We were all very positively marked to see how world-renowned mathematicians took the time to come so far away to Concepción and spend a week sharing world-class scientific results with the local numerical analyst community. For me and my colleagues, WONAPDE has always been a forum not only to learn about new trends in the specific area, but also to start productive collaborations”, he added.   

He explained that his motivations for participating in this seventh version of the meeting are diverse: “to reconnect with the international community of PDE NAs, to foster the creation of new links with the new generations of brilliant mathematicians in this area, to give recognition to our colleagues who have done so much for the scientific advancement and dissemination of computational mathematics locally and internationally; and simply to take this opportunity to see my friends/family of numerical analysis”.  

“I presented the partial results on a new type of problem that I am currently working on with my group at Monash University and got feedback to allow us to refine and/or extend our theory to cases that are currently open problems for us”, Dr. Ruiz-Baier emphasized.

WONAPDE 2024 was sponsored by UdeC, UBB, UCSC, CI²Ma, CMM (FB 210005), Computational Mathematics for Desalination Processes Group Project ‘DSALT’ (ACT 210087) and Group Project (ACT 210030).

By Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM journalist.

Posted on Jan 23, 2024 in News