David C. Seal

Mailing Address:

University of Wisconsin
Department of Mathematics
480 Lincoln Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1388

Office: 518 Van Vleck

Phone: (608) 262-3860

E-mail: seal AT math DOT wisc DOT edu

General Information

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. My appointment started in the Fall of 2006. I am currently working with Professor James Rossmanith in the field of Numerical Analysis. In particular, I work on high order Discontinuous Galerkin methods for solving hyperbolic partial differential equations. My work is naturally interdiscplinary, involving topics from Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Engineering.

For a copy of my C.V., please click here.

Research

My research interests can be broadly stated with the following bullet list:

Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing.
Efficient time integration for partial differential equations.
discontinuous-Galerkin FEM schemes.
Applications to kinetic plasma models including Vlasov-Poisson and Vlasov-Maxwell.

For a copy of my research statement, please click here. If you don't want to read the whole thing, here is a copy of a one-page research statement.

Publications

J.A. Rossmanith and D.C. Seal. A positivity-preserving high-order semi-Lagrangian discontinuous Galerkin scheme for the Vlasov-Poisson equations. J. Comp. Phys., 227: 9527--9553, 2011. (Download paper from arXiv.org)

Software

I've helped contribute to the DoGPack software package. The name stands for `The Discontinuous Galerkin Software Package' and is written in C++. There are a number of choices for what the `o' between the `D' and `G' stands for.

Teaching

Click here for my most current teaching assignment.

Spring 2012:	Math/CS 240	Discrete Math
Fall 2011:	Math 221	Calculus I (TA-Coordinator)
Spring 2011:	Math 222 (WES)	Calculus II
Fall 2010:	Math 221	Calculus I (TA-Coordinator)
Spring 2010:	Math 217	Calculus I
Fall 2009:	Math 319	Calculus with College Algebra
Spring 2009:	Math 320	Ordinary Differential Equations and Linear Algebra
Fall 2008:	Math 112	College Algebra (Instructor)
Spring 2008:	Math 101	Intermediate Algebra (Instructor)
Fall 2007:	Math 211	Business Calculus I
Spring 2007:	Math 222	Calculus II
Fall 2006:	Math 222	Calculus II

Links and Other Things

Math arxiv.
SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics )
University of Wisconsin student SIAM Chapter.
Student solutions to the Analysis Qual.
An SSH Client for Windows: ( SSH Secure Shell Client 3.2.9). In case you've never heard of SSH, this is one way to transfer files to and from your home computer to the departmental computers.
An SSH Client for Mac OS X that provides a nice little GUI: ( CyberDuck ).
If you like board games, www.boardgamegeek.com is awesome. There are a lot of cool math puzzles and combinatorial/game theory items to think about when playing board games. Admittedly, these things become more interesting so long as your vision of what defines a board game is not restricted to Candyland and Monopoly.
LaTeX shtuff. If you're running a debian linux distro, such as ubuntu, it's very easy to get latex up and running. Simply install tex-live from the package repositories. If you're running Windows, you'll need to download and install MikTeX. Then you'll need a text editor to write all your stuff. My favorite was TeXnicCenter. If you're running an Apple computer, TeXShop simply rocks. You'll still need to install the back end stuff, which is included in MacTeX.

While I was an undergraduate, I spent a summer at Indiana University doing a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) with their physics department. I wrote a paper while I was there. Check out the cool pictures at the end of the article. I also wrote this other paper about fractals that had the added bonus of magically (together with the combined powers of the courses I took) transforming my B.S. degree into a H.B.S. degree. The 'H' stands for honors. If you made it this far, and still want to find out more about me, go ahead and click here.