Eloisa Bentivegna Director at Wissenswerkstatt Berlin eloisa@wissenswerkstatt-berlin.de Experience Director at Wissenswerkstatt Berlin June 2013 - Present (1 year 2 months) I am the founder and director of Wissenswerkstatt Berlin, an outreach initiative with the mission to guide people in their individual journey to understand the scientific and technological world. I am responsible for both the cultural program and the business strategy. Marie Curie Fellow and Post Doctoral Scientist at Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics June 2010 - May 2013 (3 years) I obtained a Marie Curie Grant to work on my project "Computing in the dark sector: A cactus toolkit for modified-gravity cosmologies", in which I developed and deployed a simulation code to increase the level of detail in current cosmological simulations. Among other infrastructure, I independently developed a parallel, multigrid, elliptic solver and used it to produce the first simulation of a periodic, evolving black-hole lattice in the history of physics. Post Doctoral Researcher at Center for Computation & Technology September 2008 - May 2010 (1 year 9 months) Code correctness and visualization, framework computing, numerical relativity. Graduate Research Assistant at Penn State University June 2005 - May 2008 (3 years) I worked on various scientific-computing projects in black-hole physics and cosmology, developing and deploying an open-source, framework-based simulation code on several U.S. HPC systems. I analysed the simulation data using optimisation techniques from the world of evolutionary computation. Graduate Teaching Assistant at Penn State University August 2003 - May 2005 (1 year 10 months) I taught introductory physics classes to over 400 students in the pre-medical program. I was responsible for designing and carrying out tutorials, grading homework, and proctoring and scoring exams. Languages Italian English German (Native or bilingual proficiency) (Full professional proficiency) (Limited working proficiency) Page1
Skills & Expertise Mathematica Physics LaTeX Scientific Computing Parallel Computing Science Astrophysics High Performance Computing Computational Physics Numerical Simulation Mathematical Modeling Theory MPI Applied Mathematics Simulations Education Penn State University Ph.D., Physics, High-Performance Computing, 2003-2008 Università degli Studi di Catania M.Sc., Physics, 1996-2002 Honors and Awards Rita Levi Montalcini Grant Ministero Italiano dell'istruzione, dell'università e della Ricerca February 2014 I was awarded this grant to support my project "Digitizing the universe: precision modelling for precision cosmology" (the grant includes a tenure-track position and start-up funds at an Italian university of the candidate's choice and is awarded to the top 24 applicants nationwide across all subjects). Gründerpreis nomination degewo AG November 2013 My company, Wissenswerkstatt Berlin, was nominated for degewo's Founder Prize. Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant European Commission - 7th Framework July 2009 I was awarded a Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant for my project "Computing in the dark sector: A cactus toolkit for modified-gravity cosmologies". This scheme is designed to support experienced Page2
European researchers who have worked for more than three years outside the European Community and seek to return to a European institution. First prize (Second IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge) IEEE May 2009 Along with the CCT team, I was awarded the first prize at the Second IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge in 2009, for our entry "Large scale problem solving using automated code generation and distributed visualisation". J.A. Wheeler Fellow University of Texas at Austin May 2006 I was awarded this fellowship to attend the first International School on Astrophysical Relativity "J.A. Wheeler" in Erice in June 2006. Publications Solving the Einstein constraints in periodic spaces with a multigrid approach Classical and Quantum Gravity December 23, 2013 Authors: Eloisa Bentivegna Novel applications of Numerical Relativity demand more flexible algorithms and tools. In this paper, I develop and test a multigrid solver, based on the infrastructure provided by the Einstein Toolkit, for elliptic partial differential equations on spaces with periodic boundary conditions (PBCs). This type of boundary often characterizes the numerical representation of cosmological models, where space is assumed to be made up of identical copies of a single fiducial domain, so that only a finite volume (with PBCs at its edges) needs to be simulated. After a few tests and comparisons with existing codes, I use the solver to generate initial data for an infinite, periodic, cubic black-hole lattice. Access full text at http://arxiv.org/abs/arxiv:1305.5576 Evolution of a family of expanding cubic black-hole lattices in numerical relativity Classical and Quantum Gravity October 8, 2013 Authors: Eloisa Bentivegna, Mikolaj Korzynski We present the numerical evolution of a family of conformally-flat, infinite, expanding cubic black-hole lattices. We solve for the initial data using an initial-data prescription presented recently, along with a new multigrid solver developed for this purpose. We then apply the standard tools of numerical relativity to calculate the time development of this initial dataset and derive quantities of cosmological relevance, such as the scaling of proper lengths. Similarly to the case of S3 lattices, we find that the length scaling remains close to the analytical solution for Friedmann Lemaître Robertson Walker cosmologies throughout our simulations, which span a window of about one order of magnitude in the growth of the scale factor. We highlight, however, a number of important departures from the Friedmann Lemaître Robertson Walker Page3
class. Access full text at http://arxiv.org/abs/arxiv:1306.4055 Evolution of a periodic eight-black-hole lattice in numerical relativity Classical and Quantum Gravity July 30, 2012 Authors: Eloisa Bentivegna, Mikolaj Korzynski The idea of black-hole lattices as models for the large-scale structure of the universe has been under scrutiny for several decades, and some of the properties of these systems have been elucidated recently in the context of the problem of cosmological backreaction. The complete, three-dimensional and fully relativistic evolution of these system has, however, never been tackled. We explicitly construct the first of these solutions by numerically integrating Einstein's equation in the case of an eight-black-hole lattice with the topology of S3. Runtime analysis tools for parallel scientific applications Proceedings of the 2011 TeraGrid Conference July 18, 2011 Authors: Eloisa Bentivegna, Oleg Korobkin, Gabrielle Allen, Steve Brandt, Peter Diener, Jinghua Ge, Frank Löffler, Erik Schnetter, Jian Tao This paper describes the Alpaca runtime tools. These tools leverage the component infrastructure of the Cactus Framework in a novel way to enable runtime steering, monitoring, and interactive control of a simulation. Simulation data can be observed graphically, or by inspecting values of variables. When GPUs are available, images can be generated using volume ray casting on the live data. In response to observed error conditions or automatic triggers, users can pause the simulation to modify or repair data, or change runtime parameters. In this paper we describe the design of our implementation of these features and illustrate their value with three use cases. Check out my full author profile on INSPIRE Authors: Eloisa Bentivegna Organizations European Physical Society 2007 to Present Minerva Program (Max Planck Society) Mentee 2012 to Present Marie Curie Fellow Association 2010 to Present Page4
American Physical Society 2007 to 2012 Sigma Delta Epsilon (Graduate Women in Science) and webmaster 2005 to 2008 American Association for the Advancement of Science 2003 to 2004 Società Italiana di Fisica 2002 to 2003 Courses Ph.D., Physics, High-Performance Computing Penn State University Parallel and Vector Algorithms for Scientific Applications NUC E 530 System Optimisation with Evolutionary Algorithms C E 563 Fundamentals of Computer Architecture CSE 530 Computational Physics PHYS 527 Theoretical Mechanics PHYS 530 Quantum Mechanics PHYS 561/2 General Relativity PHYS 510/1 Statistical Mechanics PHYS 517 Electrodynamics PHYS 557 Quantum Field Theory PHYS 563 Critical Phenomena and Field Theory PHYS 518 Quantum Field Theory on Curved Spacetimes PHYS 597F Gamma-Ray Bursts ASTRO 597A Cosmology PHYS 597E M.Sc., Physics Università degli Studi di Catania Mathematical Physics Many-body theory Theoretical Physics Particle Physics Introduction to Nuclear Physics Page5
Mathematical Methods for Physics Page6
Eloisa Bentivegna Director at Wissenswerkstatt Berlin eloisa@wissenswerkstatt-berlin.de Contact Eloisa on LinkedIn Page7