David Wells
Research Scientist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Wells is a research scientist and principal developer of the deal.II finite element library with 14 years of experience applying computational science to high-impact problems like heart disease and methane leak detection. Based at UNC Chapel Hill, he combines deep numerical-analysis and scientific-computing expertise (C++, Fortran, PETSc integrations) with practical engineering skills from CI/CD to low-level performance optimization. His open-source contributions span major projects—deal.II, libMesh, IBAMR, and PETSc—where he has improved solver performance, test reliability, and build systems. A recipient of the 2025 SIAM/ACM CSE Prize and Langtangen Prize, he also mentors the next generation of computational scientists and routinely translates research code into robust, production-ready tools.
14 years of coding experience
Bachelor's degree Chemical Engineering, Bachelor's degree Chemical Engineering at Virginia Tech College of EngineeringDoctor of Philosophy - PhD Mathematics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Mathematics at Virginia Tech College of Science
Github Skills (26)
c-language10
matrix10
testing10
cmake10
c1110
c1710
petsc10
mat10
numerical-methods10
performance-optimization10
finite-element-analysis10
cprogramming-language10
linear-algebra10
data-structure9
parallel9
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
IBAMR/IBAMR
Jul 2018 - Jan 2023
An adaptive and distributed-memory parallel implementation of the immersed boundary (IB) method
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:43 releases, 497 reviews, 1754 commits in 4 years 7 months
Contributions summary:David implemented significant changes to the test suite by converting examples into new-style tests, fixing file inclusions and whitespace issues, and refining existing tests. They focused on enhancing the reliability and maintainability of the test suite. Additionally, the user addressed issues related to ensuring the correct use of periodic boundary conditions and other code improvements.
memorympiadaptivefinite-differencec-plus-plus
dealii/dealii
Jan 2015 - Jan 2023
The development repository for the deal.II finite element library
Role in this project:Backend Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Backend Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:1521 reviews, 2973 commits, 2587 PRs in 8 years 2 months
Contributions summary:David focused on fixing bugs and adding new features to the deal.II finite element library. Their contributions included resolving issues in the LAPACK full matrix library related to complex number types and the implementation of various simplex quadrature rules. In addition, the user addressed a critical bug in the code that affected the creation of a sparsity pattern from two DoFHandlers and implemented enhancements to the VTU output. They also added functionality related to the handling of OpenCASCADE geometries.
dealmultiphysicsc-plus-pluscomputational-sciencefinite-elements
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