Welcome!
Nano-scale transistors fill warehouse-scale supercomputers, yet their performance still constrains development of the jets that defend us, the medical therapies our lives depend upon, and the energy sources that will power our generation into the next.
We’re the Computational Physics Group at Georgia Tech. We develop computational models and numerical methods for these applications. Our methods buttress algorithms crafted for efficient use of the latest supercomputers and their architectures. We develop open-source software for these methods that scales to the world’s largest supercomputers.
In August 2025 our group conducted the largest-ever CFD simulation at 200T grid points (1 quadrillion degrees of freedom) on OLCF Frontier and LLNL El Capitan without loss of accuracy. This work was a 2025 Gordon Bell Prize finalist.
Check out our papers to learn more.
Thinking about joining the group?
We’re always looking for new Ph.D. and undergraduate students who like building models, algorithms, and software.
• Strong coding + numerics background is a plus
• Projects span exascale CFD, quantum algorithms, cavitation, microfluidics, and more
👉 Visit the Vacancies page for detailed instructions.
What strong applicants usually have: Experience with C/C++/Fortran, numerical methods, and HPC. Familiarity with CFD, continuum mechanics, or scientific computing is helpful but not required.
Examples of our work
Multiphase flow problems at the core of biological, energy, naval, and aerodynamic problems. We developed an implementation of the IGR technique with Florian Schäfer for simulating these flows. In August 2025 we set the record for the largest CFD simulation at 1 quadrillion degrees of freedom (200T grid points) for simulating these phenomena, using the entire OLCF Frontier system. MFC, an open-source solver we maintain, demonstrates such scale-resolving simulation of a multi-rocket-booster configuration above (viz. via Ph.D. student Ben Wilfong).
Interested in using MFC?
MFC is our flagship open-source solver for compressible multiphase flow at exascale.
• GPU-optimized for AMD and NVIDIA
• Validated on rocket, cavitation, and bubbly-flow problems
• Actively maintained and used on OLCF Frontier and LLNL El Capitan
👉 Visit the MFC website or the GitHub repo to get started.
Many of the techniques used in our record-setting rocket simulations are available in MFC, so external users can reproduce similar workflows on their own clusters.
The spectral boundary integral method leads to high-fidelity prediction and analysis of blood cells transitioning to chaos in a microfluidic device. This method of simulation provides resolution of strong cell membrane deformation with scant computational resources. We developed a stochastic model for the cell-scale flow, enabling microfluidic device design and improving treatment outcomes. The video above shows a microaneurysm (viz. via student Suzan Manasreh).
News
January 8, 2026
Our AIAA SCITECH ‘26 conference paper, focusing on symbolic computational abstraction of chemistry libraries is now available online. Work with Ph.D. student Dimitrios Adam and UTSI faculty Esteban Cisneros-Garibay. We will be presenting it during the SCITECH forum next week, Jan 12-16, 2026.
December 22, 2025
A new group preprint appears on arXiv, led by graduate student Haocheng Yu and postdoc Tianyi Chu: Energy dissipation mechanisms in an acoustically-driven slit (Yu, Chu & Bryngelson, 2025), available on arXiv. Using direct numerical simulations and spectral proper orthogonal decomposition (SPOD), we quantify how incident acoustic energy is converted into vortical motion and viscous dissipation across sound pressure level, Strouhal number, and Reynolds number, identifying the coherent structures and mode-by-mode mechanisms that govern absorption. We show peak conversion near Keulegan-Carpenter number O(1) where boundary-layer separation and vortex shedding dominate damping, while higher frequencies reduce energy input via near-slit X-shaped modes and >99% of viscous loss remains confined near the slit mouth.
December 11, 2025
Our paper on Pyrometheus, which provides symbolic abstractions for XPU and automatic differention of thermochemistry/combustion was accepted and available at Computer Physics Communications. Collaboration with Prof. Esteban Cisneros-Garibay at UTSI, group Ph.D. student Dimitrios Adam, and group alumni Henry Le Berre.
December 4, 2025
Georgia Tech runs a story on our rocket simulations, as discussed heretofore. This is closely related to the ACM 2025 Gordon Bell Finalist work with former GT faculty, new at the Courant Institute, Prof. Florian Schaefer.
November 26, 2025
Our group collaborated with Diego Vaca-Revelo and Aswin Gnanaskandan of WPI on the hardware acceleration of bubbly flow models in Navier-Stokes solvers, demonstrated in MFC. The preprint is available here.
November 24, 2025
Our group, along with collaborators at UT-Austin, Michigan, and Brown, have pushed a preprint on Bayesian model selection for soft materials at very high strain rates. It’s available here!
November 22, 2025
We are at APS DFD 2025 in Houston for the next few days. Ben, Spencer, and Tianyi are giving talks. Say hello if you see us!
November 19, 2025
Lawrence Livermore National Lab ran a nice story about our work on the largest and fastest CFD simulation (in particular on El Capitan), which is a 2025 ACM Gordon Bell Finalist. NVIDIA also posted about us in a blog post on their website.
November 15, 2025
Much of the group is at SC25 this week. Spencer is giving invited talks at the OpenACC BoF and the Gordon Bell Prize presentations on Tuesday and the NVIDIA Booth on Wednesday. Ben Wilfong is giving a paper talk at the HPCTESTS workshop.
October 25, 2025
Spencer published a paper in Computers and Fluids. It presents a scheme that can integrate for the moments of radial bubble dynamics with time-independent spectral accuracy.
