Abani Patra, Ph.D.

Abani Patra is inaugural director of DISC, Stern Family Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Mathematics. Prior to joining Tufts, Dr. Patra was the founding director of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences at University at Buffalo and has directed programs at the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Patra received his PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics from University of Texas, Austin and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Missouri-Rolla.

Dr. Patra is a computational and data scientist with interests in computational mathematics, large-scale HPC based simulation and modeling of physical systems, uncertainty quantification, analysis of numerical and modeling error, adaptive finite elements, modeling and inference based on large data sets. Dr Patra’s contributions have had wide-ranging impacts in the field of geophysical modeling. His work has led to development of tools, now used by thousands of researchers around the world to characterize, predict, and simulate physical events such as volcanic avalanches and landslides.