Crack pattern in ceramics subject to thermal shock

Research group

I currently have openings for undergraduate research assistants currently enrolled at McMaster University. Graduate and post-graduate appointment are always subject to funding availability. Contact me for more information.

Bourdin's group, August 2024. From left to right: Connor McCoid, Eunhae Cho, Samba Dumbuya, Pooya Yousefi, Jamal Shabani, and Blaise Bourdin in front of beautiful Hamilton Hall.

Current members

Graduate students

  • Eunhae Cho came to McMaster un the summer of 2024 after a MS in mathematics at the National University of Pusan (Korea). At McMaster, Eunhae’s doctoral work in Computational Science and Engineering will be centered around data acquisition and control for the shallow water equation.
  • Samba Dumbuya came to McMaster in the summer of 2023 after a joint MS in mathematics from Università degli Studi dell’Aquila (Italy) and Chalmers University (Sweden). For his MSc at McMaster, Samba will study various numerical schemes used in topology optimisation.

Postdocs

  • Pooya Yousefi joined McMaster in July 2023 after defending his PhD. under the supervision of Christopher J Larsen at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Pooya will work on the theoretical aspects of Diffusion Driven Fracture problems.
  • Conor McCoid joined McMaster in July 2024 after a PhD at the University of Geneva and a postdoc at Université Laval. His primary expertise is in domain decomposition methods.

Past members

Post docs

  • Frédéric Marazzato came to LSU in the Fall of 2020 after defending his Ph.D. at the École Nationale des Points et Chaussées in France and is supported as a postdoc by LSU’s Department of Mathematics. Frédéric is now a postdoc in the department of mathematics at the University of Arizona.
  • Alexis Marboeuf worked on the development of mef90/vDef.
  • Andres León Baldelli is now a chargé de Recherche at CNRS/ENSTA-ParisTech.
  • Jung Han Kimn is now an associate professor of Mathematics at South Dakota State University

Graduate students

  • Jamal Shabani: Ph.D. Mathematics 2024. Jamal came to LSU in the Fall of 2019 and moved to McMaster in 2021. Jamal’s work dealt with the optimal design of responsive structures supported by a grant from the applied mathematics program of the U.S. National Science Foundation. Jamal is now a postdoc in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
  • Nha Van Tran: Ph.D. Mathematics 2021. Nha came to LSU in January 2016 after receiving a Master of Science Computational Engineering from the Vietnamese-German University, in collaboration with the Ruhr University in Bochum and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics & Computer Science from the Vietnam National University. He developed Active Set methods for bilevel optimization constraints with inequality constraints in the inner problem. His work was supported by a grant from the DMREF program of the National Science Foundation. Nha is now an Actuarial Analyst in the office of the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
  • Alex Dunkel: MS. Computer Science 2019 and Ph.D. Mathematics 2020. Alex’ MS thesis project consisted of building a gateway around the research code vDef. His PhD. “A Phase-Field Approach to Diffusion-Driven Fracture” dealt with the analysis of a coupled model accounting for crack geometry in a diffusive process such as thermal cracks. He developed and implemented an efficient Newton-based solver. His work was supported by a grant from the applied mathematics program of the National Science Foundation. Alex is now a software developer at Hexagon PPM.
  • Erwan Tanné: Ph.D. Solid Mechanics 2017. His thesis “Variational phase-field models from brittle to ductile fracture: nucleation and propagation” was supported by a grant from Chevron ETC and co-advised with Jean-Jacques Marigo in the Laboratoire de Mécanique de solides at École Polytechnique. Erwan is now a post doc at the Institut de Recherche Dupuy de Lôme at ENSTA Bretagne.
  • Chukwudi Chukwudozie: Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering 2016. Chukwudi is now an applied scientist at Amazon.com in Seattle. His thesis, supported by a grant from Chevron ETC and co-advised with Mayank Tyagi deals with the development of a fully coupled hydro-mechanical reservoir simulator with focus on the numerical simulation of hydraulic fracturing.
  • Ataollah Mesgarnejad: Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Mathematics, 2014. His thesis deals with multiple numerical aspects of variational models of fracture and applications to out-of-plane deformation of thin films. Ata is now finite elements analysis engineer at Bentley Systems.
  • Cristina (Tugurlan) Marinovici: Ph.D. in Mathematics, 2008. In her thesis, Cristina developed a parallel implementation of the Fast Marching Method. Cristina is now a Software Engineer at Microsoft.
  • Navid Mozaffari: M.S. in Mathematics, 2014. Navid is now a Structural Engineering Project Associate Structural Engineering Project Associate at Sargent & Lundy.
  • Kailyn Brabhan: M.N.S. in Mathematics, 2014.
  • Sean Farley: M.S. Mathematics, 2009.