Comments from students about the Math 578 course
"One of the best professors I've had.... Dr.Alexiades is smart, intelligent, experienced and has an unique sense of humor. Thank you for taking the time to go through every single line of our assignments and teaching this course."
via Anonymous evaluation form, Spring 2021
"This course is intense (You'll learn to work/learn in parallel as you understand parallelization of numerical schemes)... but is also super motivating and rewarding... and Dr. Alexiades has taught me to appreciate the beauty of Partial differential equations and the techniques that have been developed to solve them!"
via Anonymous evaluation form, Spring 2021
"A course to actually sit down and do the implementation of several PDE schemes and see them in action. The parallelization is the cherry-on-top. Certainly worth the 'extra' work! A wonderful and highly valuable class for any computational math student! One of the most experience packed courses I've ever taken."
via Anonymous evaluation form, Spring 2021
"Instructor thoroughly graded assignments and provided advice. I really appreciated him doing this multiple times when I was doing things incorrectly. I learned a lot more than I would have if he just pencil whipped the assignments. The course website resources were excellent."
via Anonymous evaluation form, Spring 2021
"I really enjoyed your lectures which are well-prepared, detailed and also provide literature that I can read more if needed. Also, skills to write a parallel code and run it on the UTK cluster are very helpful, especially for my research, though requiring a lot of efforts for debugging. After I completed the last Lab for a 2D parallel code, I was so excited with all outcomes I obtained."
G. Huynh via email, Spring 2021
"Fantastic course! I really learned a lot."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"I do not have any feedback. Everything was perfect. One of the best courses I have taken ever. I will strongly recommend it to anyone looking for courses in the next semesters."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"He has been one of the best math professors I've had at UTK. He managed the time we had during class well, and was able to convey a lot of information over two days a week. He was very helpful when we made mistakes on assignments and labs by allowing us partial credit. Thus, making sure that if we put in the effort to learn the material, then we will do well. He was very accessible by email or in his office during office hours or not."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"Your enthusiasm about the material is very apparent and makes the class a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the class as well as the opportunity to apply C++ to engineering applications. The course covered a lot of material that was consistent in reinforcing a logical approach to problem solving and a great review of conservation principles."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"Dr. V. has been my favorite professor at UT, and I take his classes every chance I get. His passion for mathematics, science, and computational efficiency make every lecture an engaging educational experience. I have had hardly any formal trading in coding, so some topics we covered were a bit challenging. But Dr. V. was always extremely patient, and he was always readily available in his office to walk me through something I was confused about. As a result, I really enjoyed the challenge and the learning experience!"
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"I liked that the course was focused on tough projects rather than timed in-class exams. This was one of my most enjoyable classes I've ever taken."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"Math 578 has been one of my favorite classes that I've ever taken. Partial differential equations are crucial in modeling many physical phenomena, and parallel computing is an integral part of the contemporary scientific research world. So it was a great privilege to be able to learn those things in the classroom! At the end of the day, what I've learned in Math 578 has made me a much more competitive mathematician/computational scientist."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"The course overall was one of the best math courses I've taken because of the way the mathematics and phyics were taught simultaneously. There were a lot of resources available, and we all appreciated that no textbook was necessary. The way that he has set up the coding labs is much better than most labs I've had in the past because you start with one simple lab that slowly builds into something much more complex you might not have been able to create by itself."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"Everything perfect. Thank you."
Comment on course evaluation form, spring 2019
"Really enjoyed the practical application of numerical programming, introduction to parallel programming, and the clear method of linking canonical ODE/PDE forms to physical problems. The enthusiasm and joy the instructor brings to the subject is contagious!"
Anonymous, on evaluation form,, Spring 2019
"I really, really, really enjoyed this class. Not only has it
challenged me to deepen my understanding of PDEs, but it has also made
me a much better programmer!"
A. Johnson, via email, Spring 2019
"I have learned tons and enjoyed both of them. Thanks for showing us how to use math with the help of computers to solve real problems."
J. Bohorquez, via email, Spring 2019
"This was one of the best courses I have taken in UT, since the instructor managed to:
(a) provide the physical foundations and
understanding on the derivation of conservation laws which is essential for the construction and solution of a problem from scratch
(b) teach us how to transition from serial to parallel programming, and what are the implications/essential differences
(c) teach us how to utilize the campus supercomputing facilities, where the majority of the future of science lies"
Anonymous, on evaluation form, Fall 2017
"I loved the content of this course. I have been interested in parallel scientific computing for four years, and this course taught me a lot about this field.
Furthermore, it gave me experience writing code that is applicable to real-life problems. This course was by far the most enjoyable I have taken in college."
Anonymous, on evaluation form, Fall 2017
"I benefited greatly from the organization of implementing the algorithms in order of one dimension serial, one dimension parallel,
two dimension serial, and two dimension parallel."
Anonymous, on evaluation form, Fall 2017
"I am studying in computational fields more than 3 years, but I should say that he is one of the best teachers that I had.
He drastically changed my attitude and now I think I am upgraded."
Anonymous, on evaluation form, Fall 2017
"Honestly, you are one of the most impressive professors that I had and I learned a lot from you.
I hope I have the chance to be your student in other relevant courses and keep in touch with you during my research."
B. Bahmani, via email, Fall 2017
"This has been a truly excellent class and I feel so much more comfortable with the computational aspects of my research now.
I have learned a lot and really enjoyed the course."
Daniel Murphy, via email, Fall 2017
"It was a real privilege to be in your class. I learned a lot and really enjoyed learning the parallelization with MPI. It was very useful.
I also appreciate your constant words of encouragement all along the semester. You really encouraged me to work harder."
R. Djeddi, via email, Fall 2015
"This course was amazing! Thanks for teaching us!"
H. Ruzayqat, via email, Fall 2015
"Completely enjoyed every bit of the course. You made it very interesting and had us looking forward to each lecture!"
B. Abban, via email, Fall 2015
"Parallelizing was a real challenge but it felt great when I got the code to run. I got a lot out of Math578 and I hope to do some programming on my dissertation."
D. Davis, via email, Fall 2015
"It was great learning experience. I definitely gained a lot from this course."
N. Kafle, via email, Fall 2015
"Though I found the experience very difficult, I enjoyed learning about MPI in the context of finite volume methods. Thank you for teaching this course."
J. Daws, via email, Fall 2015