Research and Education in Computational Science and Engineering

Over the past two decades the field of computational science and engineering (CSE) has penetrated both basic and applied research in academia, industry, and laboratories to advance discovery, optimize systems, support decision-makers, and educate the scientific and engineering workforce. Informed by centuries of theory and experiment, CSE performs computational experiments to answer questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. CSE provides scientists and engineers of all persuasions with algorithmic inventions and software systems that transcend disciplines and scales. Carried on a wave of digital technology, CSE brings the power of parallelism to bear on troves of data. Mathematics-based advanced computing has become a prevalent means of discovery and innovation in essentially all areas of science, engineering, technology, and society; and the CSE community is at the core of this transformation. However, a combination of disruptive developments---including the architectural complexity of extreme-scale computing, the data revolution that engulfs the planet, and the specialization required to follow the applications to new frontiers---is redefining the scope and reach of the CSE endeavor. This report describes the rapid expansion of CSE and the challenges to sustaining its bold advances. The report also presents strategies and directions for CSE research and education for the next decade.Comment: Major revision, to appear in SIAM Revie

Chance-Constrained Outage Scheduling using a Machine Learning Proxy

Outage scheduling aims at defining, over a horizon of several months to years, when different components needing maintenance should be taken out of operation. Its objective is to minimize operation-cost expectation while satisfying reliability-related constraints. We propose a distributed scenario-based chance-constrained optimization formulation for this problem. To tackle tractability issues arising in large networks, we use machine learning to build a proxy for predicting outcomes of power system operation processes in this context. On the IEEE-RTS79 and IEEE-RTS96 networks, our solution obtains cheaper and more reliable plans than other candidates