CS 558 / CSE 513 : Calculus on Meshes (Topics in Numerical Analysis)

NEW Course for Fall 2008

Tu-Th 11 - 12:15, Room 1103 Siebel Center CS, CRN 35929, Credit hours 4
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Computer Science
Instructor : Anil N. Hirani

Overview: This class is about numerical methods for discrete differential forms. After an overview the subject, the course will be divided into 3 parts : Calculus on Manifolds , Discretization of Exterior Calculus, and Finite Element Methods. Suitable for graduate students in Numerical Analysis, Computational Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Graphics. There are no prerequisites since the class will be self-contained.

Class Schedule: Available here

Lecture Notes: (Class members access only) Download this file.

Homework Assignments: Available here

Collaboration: Collaboration in homeworks is highly encouraged. Please do discuss and collaborate, but write up your solutions yourself. For the programming part also, discussion is encouraged, but write your own code.

Course Goals: On completing the course students should understand (i) basic exterior calculus; (ii) theory and applications of discrete differential forms; and (iii) basic numerical methods for PDEs and topology using discrete differential forms.

Class Format: Lectures by instructor, 5 homeworks including some simple MATLAB programming, midterm exam, final exam. Lecture notes will be provided through the semester.

Contacts: Instructor : Prof. Anil N. Hirani, hirani at cs dot uiuc dot edu ; 217-333-2727; Room 4320 Siebel Center; Office hours Thursdays by appointment.
Teaching Assistant : Evan VanderZee, vanderze at illinois dot edu

Required Textbooks:

  1. An Introduction to Manifolds, Loring W. Tu, 2008, Springer.

Other Resources: Some other useful books, papers, etc.


Page maintained by Anil N. Hirani and Evan VanderZee. Last updated December 22, 2008. The development of this course is based in part on work supported by the National Science Foundation under CAREER Award Grant No. DMS-0645604. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).