Bio

B.A., University of Evansville, 1969 Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1974Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1974

Layne T. Watson received the B.A. degree (magna cum laude) in psychology and mathematics from the University of Evansville, Indiana, in 1969, and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1974. He has worked for USNAD Crane, Sandia National Laboratories, and General Motors Research Laboratories and served on the faculties of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and University of Notre Dame. He is currently a member of the faculty of health sciences, and professor of computer science, mathematics, and aerospace and ocean engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has served as senior editor of Applied Mathematics and Computation, and associate editor of ORSA Journal on Computing, SIAM Journal on Optimization, Computational Optimization and Applications, Evolutionary Optimization, Engineering Computations, and the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a fellow of the National Institute of Aerospace, and of the International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine. He has published well over 345 refereed journal articles and 250 refereed conference papers. His research interests include fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, numerical analysis, optimization, parallel computation, mathematical software, image processing, bioinformatics, and machine learning.

Awards

  • Life Fellow of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2015
  • Outstanding Reviewer Award, Emerald Publishing Co., for the journal Engineering Computations 2012, 2013
  • Best Paper Award, 19th High Performance Computing Symposium, 2011 Spring Simulation Multiconference 2011
  • Fellow of the International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine 2008
  • Dean's Award for Excellence in Research 2007
  • Fellow of The National Institute of Aerospace 2004
  • First Place George Marra Award for Excellence in Writing, Society for Wood Science and Technology 2004
  • DARPA BioSPICE Special Recognition Award 2002
  • Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Excellence in Research 2000
  • Best Paper Award, Sixth AIAA/NASA/ISSMO Symposium on Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization 1997
  • Fellow of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 1993
  • Special Year lecturer at The University of Maryland 1981
  • Teaching Fellowship, Department of Mathematics, The University of Michigan 1969 - 1974
  • Freshman Math Award, University of Evansville. 1966--69, Hoosier Scholar Scholarship, State of Indiana 1966
  • Academic Alumni Scholarship, University of Evansville 1965 - 1969

Research Interests

  • Numerical Analysis
  • Nonlinear Programming
  • Mathematical Software
  • Solid Mechanics
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Image Processing
  • Scientific Computation
  • Bioinformatics
  • Machine Learning

Selected Publications

  • Algorithm 1007: QNSTOP---quasi-Newton algorithm for stochastic optimization ABS ACM Trans. Math. Software, 46, Article 17 (2020) 1--20. B. D. Amos, D. R. Easterling, L. T. Watson, W. I. Thacker, B. S. Castle, and M. W. Trosset