AMOR Staff - Dr Shaun Forth

Dr Shaun A. Forth, BSc (Hons) PhD CMath MIMA CSci

Position

Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computation

Contact Details

Engineering Systems Department
Cranfield University
Defence College of Management & Technology
Shrivenham, Swindon
SN6 8LA

E: S.A.Forth@cranfield.ac.uk

T: +44 (0)1793 785311

F: +44 (0)1793 784196

Background

After a completing a BSc in Applied Mathematics at Warwick University I undertook my PhD in the School of Mathematics, University of Bristol. My thesis concerned morphological and hydrodynamic instabilities in binary alloy solidification motivated by the need to understand and control these phenomena when growing large single crystals for the semiconductor industry. The work was also reported in two papers, the first looking at the coupling between forced fluid flow in the molton region and the morphological instability, and the second including the effects of solutal convection.

After completing my PhD I spent 5 years working for British Aerospace PLC (now BAE SYSTEMS) as a research aerodynamicist at Sowerby, BAe's corporate research centre, located at Filton, Bristol. I spent 3 years developing a 3-D parabolised Navier-Stokes Flow solver for rapid analysis of the aerodynamics of supersonic missiles. I also worked on an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) solver for studying the effects of aircraft exhaust emissions on the atmosphere, Cartesian grid solvers for general geometries and a multiblocked, mesh embedded Jameson solver.

In 1994 I joined the Applied Mathematics and Operational Research (AMOR) Group, which now resides in the Engineering Systems Department of Cranfield University's Defence College of Management and Technology at Shrivenham. My time is divided between: teaching numerical methods and scientific computing on a range of MSc modules, research, and industrial consultancy.

Teaching and Administration

I am module manager for three MSc modules (Scientific Programming with Fortran 95, Computational Methods for ODEs, and Optimisation) for full and part-time students on the MSc degree Scientific Computation and the module Numerical Methods in Engineering which forms part of several MSc programmes for engineers. I also chair the Specialist Academic Computing Systems Working Group, a forum for developing and supporting specialist research and teaching software, UNIX/Linux operating systems and supercomputing provision on Cranfield's Shrivenham campus, which reports to the Academic Computer Users' Committee.

Research

Currently my research is focused on the field of Automatic Differentiation (AD). AD concerns the mathematical and software processes involved in taking functions defined by computer code and creating new code that computes the derivatives of the original code's outputs in terms of its inputs. I am interested in AD software tool development, theory, and application to industrial problems. For more information see http://www.amorg.co.uk/AD. I was co-organiser of the UK Automatic Differentiation Workshop series, and now co-organise the successor European Workshops on Automatic Differentiation. I was a member of the Program Committee for AD2004: The 4th International Conference on Automatic Differention. I have been invited to give the opening talk in a special session on “AD in Optimization” of the 2^nd European Conference on Computational Optimization at the University of Montpellier in April 2007.

I have successfully supervised one PhD student, Robert Ketzscher, currently supervise two part-time and two full-time PhD students, and have been internal examiner for several PhD examinations.

I was a member (2003-2005) of the EPSRC Peer Review College. I have refereed papers for numerous Journals including ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Journal of Computational Physics, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids and Mathematical Programming.

Consultancy

I regularly perform consultancy for companies in the aerospace sector on application of automatic differentiation to industrial simulation codes and in particular for CFD flow solution and mesh generation.

Grants

S A Forth, M.B. Giles, N. Qin and A.J. Keane (2003-2006) ,

AD2CompEng: Automatic Differentiation & Adjoints applied to COMPutational ENGineering,

EPSRC Grant GR/R85358/01

P.D. Smith, S A Forth and T.A Rose (2003-2006) ,

A Computational Tool for the Evaluation of Blast-Structure Interactions,

EPSRC Grant GR/S04109/01

S A Forth and J.D. Pryce (2001-2003) ,

Near Optimal Automatic Differentiation for CFD Fluxes,

EPSRC Grant GR/R21882/01

Publications

Journal Papers

Emanuel M Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & Ning Qin (2005),

Automatic Differentiation of a Time-Dependent CFD Solver for Optimisation of a Synthetic Jet ,

Submitted to Applied Numerical Analysis and Computational Mathematics

Shaun A Forth (2005) ,

An Efficient Overloaded Implementation of Forward Mode Automatic Differentiation in MATLAB,

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Volume 32, Issue 2 (June 2006) pp 195-222

Trevor J Ringrose & Shaun A Forth (2005),

Simplifying multivariate second-order response surfaces by fitting constrained models using automatic differentiation,

Technometrics, Volume 47, number 3 (August) pp 249-259

Larry F Shampine, Robert Ketzscher & Shaun A Forth (2005) ,

Using AD to solve BVPs in MATLAB,

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Volume 31 , Issue 1 (March) pp 79-94

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & Ning Qin (2005),

Elimination AD Applied to Jacobian Assembly for an Implicit Compressible CFD Solver,

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids , Volume 47 , Issue 10-11 (January 2005) pp 1315 - 1321. Special Issue: 8th ICFD Conference on Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics . Issue Edited by Mike J. Baines, Mike J.P. Cullen, Chris Farmer, Mike B. Giles, M. Rabbitt.

Shaun A Forth, Mohamed Tadjouddine, John D Pryce & John K Reid (2004) ,

Jacobian Code Generated by Source Transformation and Vertex Elimination is as Efficient as Hand-Coding,

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Volume 30 , Issue 3 (September 2004) pp 266 - 299

Shaun A Forth & Adam A Wheeler (1992) ,

Coupled Convective and Morphological Instability in a Simple Model of the Solidification of a Binary Alloy, Including a Shear Flow,

Journal of Fluid Mechanics 236 pp61-94

Shaun A Forth & Adam A Wheeler (1989) ,

Hydrodynamic and morphological stability of the unidirectional solidification of a freezing binary alloy: a simple model,

Journal of Fluid Mechanics 202 pp339-366

Refereed Conference Papers

Mattia Padulo, Shaun A Forth & Marin D Guenov (2008) ,

Robust Aircraft Conceptual Design using Automatic Differentiation in Matlab,

Submitted to AD2008 - 5th International Conference on Automatic Differentiation, Aug 11-15 2008, B-IT Center, Bonn, Germany.

Rahul V. Kharche and Shaun A Forth (2006) ,

Source Transformation for MATLAB Automatic Differentiation,

Computational Science - ICCS 2006 6th International Conference, Reading, UK, May 28-31, 2006, Proceedings, Part IV, pages 558-565. Editors Vassil Alexandrov, Dick van Albada, Peter Sloot and Jack Dongarra, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3994, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 3-540-34385-7.

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & Ning Qin (2005),

Automatic Differentiation of a Time-Dependent CFD Solver for Optimisation of a Synthetic Jet ,

Published in ICNAAM 2005, T. E. Simos (Editor), Georgios Psihoyios (Editor), Ch. Tsitouras (Editor), pp514-517 ISBN: 3-527-40652-2, September 2005

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth& Andy J. Keane (2005),

Adjoint Differentiation of a Structural Dynamics Solver,

Automatic Differentiation: Applications, Theory, and Implementations, Bücker, M.; Corliss, G.; Hovland, P.; Naumann, U.; Norris, B. (Eds.)
Lecture Notes in Computational Science & Engineering, Volume 50, p309-319, Springer, 2006. ISBN 3-540-28403-6

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Frances Bodman, John D. Pryce & Shaun A Forth (2005) ,

Improving the Performance of the Vertex Elimination Algorithm for Derivative Calculation,

Shaun A Forth & Robert Ketzscher (2004) ,

High-Level Interfaces for the MAD (Matlab Automatic Differentiation) Package,

4th European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences & Engineering (ECCOMAS) eds. P Neittaanmaki, T Rossi, S Korotov, E Onate, J Periaux and D Knorzer, CD-ROM published by University of Jyvaskyla, Department of Mathematical Information Technology, Finland, ISBN 951-39-1869-6

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & John D. Pryce (2003) ,

Hierarchical Automatic Differentiation by Vertex Elimination and Source Transformation,

Computational Science and its Applications - ICCSA 2003, pt 2, Proceedings
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2668, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 115-124

David W F Standingford & Shaun A Forth (2003),

A Discrete Sensitivity Solver for an Industrial CFD Code via Automatic Differentiation,

in Computational Fluid Dynamics 2002, Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics, ICCFD, Sydney, Australia, 15-19 July, 2002 Springer, pp82-87, ISBN 3-540-00793-3

Shaun A Forth & Mohamed Tadjouddine (2003),

CFD Newton Solvers with EliAD, An Elimination Automatic Differentiation Tool,

Trevor J Ringrose & Shaun A Forth(2002),

Improved Fitting of Constrained Multivariate Regression Models using Automatic Differentiation,

in Proceedings of the 15th Symposium on Computational Statistics. Eds. Hardle W and Ronz B. Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg. pp 383--388. Berlin, Germany, 2002

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth, John D. Pryce & John K Reid (2002) ,

Performance Issues for Vertex Elimination Methods in Computing Jacobians

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference in Computational Science
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2330, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1077-1086

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & John D Pryce (2002),

AD Tools and Prospects for Optimal AD in CFD Flux Jacobian Calculations,

Automatic Differentiation of Algorithms: From Simulation to Optimization,
George Corliss, Christele Faure, Andreas Griewank, Laurent Hascoet, and Uwe Naumann (eds.) Springer-Verlag, New York, 2002, pp255-261

Shaun A Forth & Trevor P Evans (2002),

Aerofoil Optimisation via AD of a Multigrid Cell-Vertex Euler Flow Solver,

Shaun A Forth (2001) ,

A Second Order Accurate, Space-Time Limited, BDF Scheme for the Linear Advection Equation,

Godunov Methods: Theory and Applications, Ed. E.F. Toro Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers 2001, p 335-352

Unrefereed Conference Papers/Presentations

Marina Menshikova and Shaun A Forth ,

Branch Detection and Sparsity Estimation in MATLAB,

6^th European Workshop on Automatic Differentiation, Nov 15-16, 2007, INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France.

G. Lindkvist, S. J. Shaw, S. A. Forth and T. W. Lowe,

A quadratic indirect boundary element method for modelling gas bubbles under three dimensional deformation,

ICFD Conference on Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics, University of Reading, 26-29 March 2007.

Shaun A Forth ,

Introduction to Automatic Differentiation for Optimization,

EUCCO07: 2^nd European Conference on Computational Optimization, April 2-4, 2007, University of Montpellier, France.

Shaun A Forth (2005) ,

Automatic Differentiation for Optimization,

MIR@W DAY Optimization, Warwick University Mathematics Institute, 3rd October 2005.

Timothy A. Rose, Peter D. Smith and Shaun A. Forth (2005) ,

Development of an Adaptive Mesh CFD Code for High Explosive Blast Simulation,

Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Interaction of the Effects of Munitions with Structures, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 2005.

Shaun A Forth ,

Developments in the MAD Package,

1st European Workshop on Automatic Differentiation, April 2005, Maison du Seminaire, Nice, France.

Emmanuel Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & Ning Qin,

Differentiating a Time-Dependent CFD Solver,

1st European Workshop on Automatic Differentiation, April 2005, Maison du Seminaire, Nice, France.

Shaun A Forth ,

Introduction to Automatic Differentiation,

AD2004: 4th International Conference on Automatic Differentiation, July 19th-23rd 2004 , University of Chicago, Gleacher Center, Chicago, USA.

Shaun A Forth, David Standingford and Paul Dawson (2004) ,

An Adjoint Solver for an Industrial CFD Code via Automatic Differentiation,

AD2004: 4th International Conference on Automatic Differentiation, July 19th-23rd, University of Chicago, Gleacher Center, Chicago, USA.

Shaun A Forth, Mohamed Tadjouddine and Andy Keane (2004) ,

Automatic Differentiation for a Structural Optimization Solver,

EUCCO2004: European Conference on Computational Optimization, Special Session on Automatic Differentiation and Large-Scale Optimization, March 29-31 2004, Technical University of Dresden, Germany.

Mohamed Tadjouddine, Shaun A Forth & Ning Qin,

Elimination AD Applied to Jacobian Assembly for an Implicit Compressible CFD Solver,

UK Workshop on Automatic Differentiation, 27-28 November 2003, University of Hertfordshire, UK.

Reports

Shaun A Forth and Marcus Edval (2006) ,

User Guide for MAD a MATLAB Automatic Differentiation Toolbox

Engineering Systems Department, Defence College of Management & Technology, Cranfield University, 2006.

Rahul V. Kharche and Shaun A Forth (2005) ,

Source Transformation for MATLAB Automatic Differentiation,

AMOR 2005/01, Applied Mathematics & Operational Research, Engineering Systems, Defence College of Management & Technology, Cranfield University, December 2005.

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