To day, I'd like to begin my journey of blogging my PhD. study life in Fudan university, as a member of Computational Mathematics direction.
For a student of computational mathematics, one has to find his/her academic background. In Fudan University, a lot of professors are entitled with computational PhD. As my current boss, Professor Weiguo Gao, he is interested in electronic structure calculations, and numerical problems in network and control flows. As Professor Yangfeng Su, the computations in Very-Large-Scale-Integrationi (VLSI). As Professor Jungong Xue puts his effort in stochastic problems. All of them have a deep understanding in numerical linear algebra and related algorithms, as well as having a basic understanding of the background they are going to deal with. Last month, due to the application of CSC Program, I have got a chance to work with Carlos Javier Garcia-Cervera. And I got the invitation letter. The research is entitled with ``First principle calculations of Continuous Solvent''. I think it is a very good starting point to open my career of doing research.
So far as I know, computational physics, chemistry, or even biology is a hot research field all over the world. Take computational physics an example, people are eager to know what solid behaves. A number of questions could be raised. What is their permittivity? How to compute their heat conductivity? Which color will the look like? How to predict the magnetic behavior of a iron? Of course, there are a lot of work had been done and the theory is also well established.
What can I do? Maybe I should go to do a search of articles that already exist about the continuous solvent. In period one, I think the very first paper I should read is written by Professor Weiguo Gao and Professor Zhipan Liu. The second step is to guess out what Professor Carlos would like to view the problem. The third step is to read some of the publication of Professor Weinan E to see what was going on. In period two, I would like to do a review on the numerical methods that exists for continuous solvents.
Ah, I need to make friends with Wei Wang and Weile Jia from Beijing USTC. It is pretty strange that I can not find any information about them on Google. Nah, forget it.
Ah, I also want to have a talk with Snoozy Liu tomorrow. When will she go to the office? I have to take care of her. And next, I am going to discuss with her future, which is quite an impossible problem at the first sight, yet we have to get an answer. Yes, just as the Social Network tells us, the further is unpredictable. Yes, she is on duty tomorrow, but is not sure when she will arrive. Therefore, we can have a talk maybe around noon. In my opinion, I should respect her idea of her life. As a boyfriend, I should give her suggestion on what is worthy to be done or what is not. But the decision right is her. So the next question is that what is my idea about her career? She wants to be a what? As a faculty? As a staff working in the bank? Yes, probably, she only got two answers listed above. And she might agree that she wants to become a faculty more than a staff, I bet. To become a Professor, one has to have something that he/she is not replaceable. How to demonstrate that you are the exclusive one? The factors we can control: according to your career path, according to the paper you published. My conclusion will be that it is a good experience of study over sea. But is it worthy to quit from Fudan to apply for the US school? I should listen to her motivation! If the motivation is right, then, I should give a supportive attitude and will encourage her to fulfill her career. Yes! A wise solution exists that she could prepare the English tests first to consider more on her career path.
The real work we are going to do now is sure, to get a firm basic of knowledge for the future. She might agree to take a TOEFL and a GRE test this year. Usually it will cost her 3 months to prepare TOEFL and half a year of preparing GRE. Here comes the question, whether it is a good idea to go to France? Learning a completely new language is surely a time-consuming task. It has already been too full for her to get the mathematics right and the English good! So, I don't think so. Maybe its a good idea to postpone studying French to the first year of graduate school. I should ask Yingxing Zhao or Zhenjie Ren for advices. Therefore, preparing TOEFL test will be the Task No. 1. Preparing GRE will be the Task No. 2. Preparing French will be the Task No. 3. And I will not enourage her for getting a job now, since she had already decided to get a PhD in Fudan.
OK, back to my career, I should now do three tasks in the next 24 hours.
First one, finish the C code for B variation of GMRES.
Two, get matrices from FEMLAB.
Three, do all experiments.
Have a nice night~!
