Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Developing World
Using Computers to Explore the Universe
Cities in an Environmental Context
Fostering Innovations in Math and Science Teaching
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Using Computers to Explore the Universe
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Elaine Surick Oran '66 |
As a Bryn Mawr College student, Elaine Surick Oran '66 was thrilled to learn that she would be able to double major in physics and chemistry. "Bryn Mawr was an intellectual feast," Oran recalls. "I could study anything I wanted to learn. I had enormous freedom."
Oran signed up for graduate-level physics courses and other daunting classes. "I was trying to stuff everything in my head at once," she explains, "somewhat in fear that the chance would disappear." College administrators "were consoling but not overly sympathetic when I realized I was taking too many courses," she remembers.
Today, as the senior scientist for reactive flow physics at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., Oran continues to investigate a diverse range of scientific questions. Her research combines knowledge and methods from science, mathematics, engineering and computer science.
Numerical Simulations
The technique Oran helped pioneer — numerical simulation of complicated and dynamic fluid flows — helps us understand phenomena as diverse as movements of fish and birds, torpedo launches from submarines, large-scale fires in cities and forests, solar eruptions and explosions of supernovae. "The techniques for studying these phenomena by numerical simulations have underlying similarities in the types of physical processes involved, the form of the terms in the model equations, the numerical algorithms used to transform these terms into algebraic equations to solve on a computer, the structure of computer code, and how we analyze and interpret the result," Oran says.
"When the problem is complex enough, there is no simple mathematical solution," Oran says. "The starting point is a real-world observation. The end must be a comparison of the computed result with that observation."
Oran, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, has lectured on numerical simulation all over the world. She presented talks on the subject as the recipient of the Dryden Distinguished Lectureship in Aerospace Research for 2002, an honor bestowed by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and for the Louis Clark Vanuxem Public Lecture series at Princeton University in October 2006. Previous lecturers in the Princeton series include Edwin Hubble, Carl Sagan, James Conant, Thomas Mann and Ralph Ellison.
"The multidisciplinary approach teaches us how things work, how we can test our theories and expand our intuition, how to design systems and how to combine disparate elements into a design," Oran told the Princeton audience. "You seldom solve the biggest questions," Oran says, "just produce a series of more questions." Some of these can be tackled right away, but it may be years before others can be addressed, she explains.
Numerical simulation is closely tied to developments in computer hardware and numerical algorithms, Oran says. "The disciplines that took advantage of it the earliest were the newer disciplines, such as plasma physics, which developed plasma-simulation methods," Oran says. Older fields, such as combustion and physics generally, were slow to recognize that "this is as powerful a tool as theory and experimentation," she notes. "Yet unless we develop radically new concepts for computers, ones that will increase computational speed and memory, we will not continue the current rapid increase in numerical simulation capabilities," she cautions.
High Honors
When Oran first learned to program a computer at Bryn Mawr in 1962, the computer she used took up an entire room in the basement of the science building. She recalls spending many hours punching holes in tapes and cards to put in data. Oran went on to earn an M.Ph. degree from Yale University's department of physics in 1968 and a Ph.D. from Yale's department of engineering and applied sciences in 1972. She has been at NRL since 1972. She has also been a visiting faculty member at many academic institutions worldwide and is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan .
In 2006, Oran received the Society of Women Engineers' Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from the École Centrale de Lyon, an honor bestowed fewer than 10 times in the institution's 150-year history. She received the Combustion Institute's Zeldovich Gold Medal in 2000, named for the Russian physicist Yakov B. Zeldovich, who also worked in fields ranging from combustion to nuclear physics.
One event that occurred at Bryn Mawr still haunts her memories, Oran says. She was given a car, and although it was against the rules, she kept it at the College. One day, she parked behind her dormitory, Radnor Hall, locked the door and started walking away. Then with horror she saw the car rolling downhill, heading straight toward the science building! "I had a vision of my entire college opportunity disappearing as this car smashed into the brick wall and broke the building's windows," Oran recalls. Not thinking, just moving, she ran to the car, grabbed at the door handle, unlocked it, jumped in and, just in time, was able to stop the car.
"That was traumatic," Oran says. "It took years until I could even tell the story to anyone."
Barbara Spector writes on science and technology as well as business topics. She is the editor-in-chief of Family Business magazine and former editor of The Scientist.