Will Pazner
Assistant Professor at Portland State University
Livermore, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolWill Pazner is an applied mathematician and computational scientist with 11 years of experience building scalable numerical solvers and scientific software, now serving as an Assistant Professor in Portland State University's mathematics department. He brings deep expertise from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—where he worked as a Computational Mathematician and Sidney Fernbach Fellow—on high-performance finite element methods and preconditioning for PDEs. His open-source contributions to the prominent mfem C++ library include low-order refined solvers, custom degree-of-freedom permutations, and Hypre-integrated matrix assembly, reflecting a focus on efficient preconditioning and solver robustness. Trained at Brown (Ph.D., M.Sc.) with exchange work at UC Berkeley and an undergraduate degree from University of Toronto, he combines rigorous theory with production-quality code for large-scale simulation. Colleagues describe him as someone who bridges deep algorithmic insight with practical implementation choices that accelerate real-world computational science.
11 years of coding experience
Doctoral Exchange Scholar, Mathematics, Doctoral Exchange Scholar, Mathematics at University of California, BerkeleyDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Applied Mathematics, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Applied Mathematics at Brown UniversityBachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Mathematics, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Mathematics at University of Toronto
Github Skills (13)
partial-differential-equations10
solver10
solve10
finite-element-analysis10
cluster-computing10
linear-systems10
c-language10
el10
parallel-computing10
cprogramming-language10
numerical-methods10
linear-algebra10
scientific-computing10
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
mfem/mfem
Dec 2018 - Jan 2023
Lightweight, general, scalable C++ library for finite element methods
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:958 reviews, 1406 commits, 292 PRs in 4 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Will contributed to the codebase by implementing functionality for handling and solving partial differential equations using finite element methods. The code changes involve the addition of low-order refined solvers and the associated matrix assembly logic, leveraging libraries and tools like MFEM and Hypre. The contributions further include the implementation of a custom permutation for element degrees of freedom, facilitating efficient preconditioning and error analysis within the solvers, showing a strong focus on the core computational aspects of the project.
c-plus-plusfinitefemamrc-library
pazner/mfem
Jun 2021 - Mar 2025
Lightweight, general, scalable C++ library for finite element methods
Contributions:31 PRs, 400 pushes, 181 branches in 3 years 9 months
scalablecppc-libraryfinite-element-methodsc-plus-plus
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