Gary W. Howell, Ph. D.
512 Farmington Woods Dr., Cary, NC 27511
Phone: (919) 469-5454 Email: gary_howell@ncsu.edu
PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS
Good team member. Broad knowledge of science, mathematics, and computer science. Love to
dig into new technical areas. Enjoy letting others teach me. Independent thinker. Good listener.
Meet deadlines. Ability to write proposals, make presentations, mentor, teach, and organize team
efforts.
EDUCATION
Ph. D.
M. Sc.
M. Sc.
B. A.
Mathematics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL - 1986
Engineering Sciences, University of Florida - 1984
Mathematics, University of Florida - 1981
Mathematics, New College, Sarasota, Florida - 1973
LANGUAGES:
C, C++, FORTRAN 77 & 90, APL, Matlab, Maple, LATEX, MPI, OpenMP, PVM, MSOffice, Perl,
LSF, html, Shell scripts on UNIX platforms (LINUX, Solaris, Tru64, AIX)
SOME RECENT WORK ON ALGORITHMS AND SOFTWARE
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Working to extend Householder Bidiagonalization to work with high cache efficiency in the
sparse matrix case. This will provide a stable computation for the sparse singular value
problem. The code is an extension of Householder bidiagonalization routines for the dense
case (discussed in LAPACK Working Note 174) currently being incorporated into LAPACK.
BHESS (Algorithm 841 in the ACM TOMS collection) together with BR iteration (G. A. Geist,
G. W. Howell, and D. S. Watkins, ``The BR Eigenvalue Algorithm", SIAM J. on Matrix
Analysis and Applications . Vol.20,4, pp. 1083-1098, (July 1999) provide an efficient means
of calculating eigenvalues of unsymmetric matrices.
G. W. Howell, C.T. Fulton, J.W. Demmel, S. Hammarling, K. Marmol, “Cache efficient
Algorithms for Householder Bidiagonalization”, LAPACK Working Note 174, a shorter version
has been submitted to ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software.
G. W. Howell and N. Diaa, "Algorithm 841: BHESS, cache efficient reduction to similar smallband Hessenberg form", ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, (March 2005).
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Software Libraries and User Environments
Worked in configuring and optimizing I/O and message processing on 1024 processor
supercomputing site and on several other clusters. Maintained and ported software libraries and
provided benchmarking and documentation. Aid in porting, debugging, and optimizing parallel
applications and in developing a stable and usable programming environment.
MPI: I served on the Message Passing Interface (MPI) Forum. MPI is the standard Message
Passing library that provides a portable high level interface for parallel coding. The forum
produced the MPI standard set of protocols for message passing. These are now very widely
used, enabling parallel algorithms to be portably coded.
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LAPACK Library is the standard software library for dense matrix computations using the BLAS.
By making better use of in-cache data, LAPACK gains substantial speed ups compared to
the earlier LINPACK and EISPACK packages. I developed Householder bidiagonalization
routines for the next LAPACK library release.
BLAS Library: Served on the BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine) committee. The
committee established a standard library of basic linear algebra subroutines to enable
portable scientific computation codes to run fast on serial computers. Contributed to the
BLAS software library. The Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines allow linear algebra operations
such as matrix multiply with mega flop rates near CPU clock speeds. I proposed some BLAS
2.5 operations which speed reduction to banded (e.g. bidiagonal) form.
Other libraries: Experience porting and customizing other libraries, e.g. porting and tutoring
users in much of the DOE ACTS software, as well as many other standard open source
numerical and application packages. Supported users in customizing and scripting packages
as necessary for their own applications or contracted work in algorithm and package
development.
Numerical Linear Algebra
Worked in numerical linear algebra for more than ten years, developing algorithms and
implementing them in software. Worked in solving linear systems, in solving least squares
problems, and in computing eigenvalues and singular vectors, working with dense and
sparse systems, and in parallel. (See papers below). In consulting with users, this
experience helps me in choosing appropriate libraries. A current project is finding singular
values of a sparse matrix with flop rates comparable to the dense case.
Applications
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Parallel Monte Carlo. Invented a method of separating isotopes via oscillatory flow. Wrote
Monte Carlo codes to simulate the underlying convection diffusion process.
Error bounds for polynomial interpolation: Generalized an 1830’s theorem due to AugustinLouis Cauchy to apply error bounds for approximation of derivative. Wrote codes to
automatically determine error bounds for polynomial interpolation.
 Spacecraft redesign. Predicted re-entry temperatures of Atlas rockets using finite difference
and finite element codes.
 Thermal design of recovery system for an Atlas booster. Developed finite difference and finite
element analysis to determine amount of insulation/ablation required for a tumbling rocket
booster re-entering atmosphere.
 Device to measure cross-section of the Shuttle Solid Booster Rockets (SineBar). The
mathematical analysis and computer implementation of a circular spline device to accomplish
this measurement as part of redesign after the Challenger explosion.
 Design of pressure sensing system for release of parachutes.
 Numeric Analysis of stress on water impact and of flotation requirements when wave action
submerges flotation devices.
 Image Processing Algorithms for successful DARPA proposal for real-time LIDAR sensor.
 Benchmarking Codes, Least squares analyses, Inverse & regularization problems, Local
search algorithms, Statistical analysis
Teaching, Mentoring & Publishing
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Developed and taught short courses in MPI and graduate courses in parallel computation.
Several decades experience teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in scientific
computation, numerical analysis, mathematics, operations research, statistics and computer
science.
Supervised theses in parallel computations, numerical analysis, statistics, and computer
science.
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Served on numerous Ph.D. and M.S. thesis committees in Engineering, Computer Science,
Computer Engineering, Aviation & Human Factors, Operations Research, Electrical
Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Space Sciences.
Author of more than thirty publications in numerical linear algebra, approximation theory,
differential equations, statistics, and thermal design.
$1000 award for mentoring winner of the 2001 Nelson Ying Science Competition for high
school students.
PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS
Jan. 2004 - present Computational Scientist, High Performance Computing, ITD, NCSU, Raleigh,
NC
Summer 2005
Visiting Researcher, CERFACS, Toulouse, France
2002 - Jan. 2004
Technical Consultant II, High Performance Scientific and Parallel
Computation group, Hewlett Packard Corp, Vicksburg, MS
2001 - 2002
Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL
Summer 2001
Visiting Researcher, CERFACS, Toulouse, France
2001 - 2002
Senior Scientist Consultant, Harris Corporation, Melbourne, FL
1997 - 2000
Operations Research Faculty, Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL
1991 - 2000
Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics, Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL
Spring 1997
Visiting Professor of Applied Mathematics, Washington State University,
Pullman, WA
1996 - 1999
Summer Faculty -Associate Professor of Computer Science, Florida Tech,
Melbourne, FL
1994 - 1995
Summer Faculty Fellowship Researcher, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
Oak Ridge, TN
1987 - 1990
Engineering Consultant, Thiokol Corporation, Kennedy Space Center, FL
1986 - 1991
Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics, Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL
FUNDED RESEARCH
Funded work includes:
2005
NIH senior scientist for $500K grant for ECCR Drug Discovery (algorithm development
and benchmarking).
2002
PI of NSF Next Generation $104K to develop a more cache efficient algorithm for
Householder Bidiagonalization (to be incorporated into LAPACK) -- NSF grant EIA0103642 from Next Generation Software.
2001
Senior Scientist Consultant to Harris Corp. for Jigsaw LIDAR real-time image
processing sensor proposal. funded by DARPA.
2001
NSF -MRI (major research Instrumentation) $250K to design and construct a 48 node
Beowulf parallel computer at Florida Tech to be used by faculty, students, and local
industry.
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1994 - 1995
Summer Faculty Fellowship at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop
algorithms to reduce a general matrix to similar small band form and to
efficiently determine Eigenvalues.
1989 - 1991
Co-PI of a $100K NSF grant to study parallel algorithms.
1991 - 1992
$13K from Florida Solar Energy Commission to study isotope separation.
1990 - 1991
$20K grant from TRDA to study Convection Diffusion problems, joint with V.
Lakshmikantham.
1989 - 1990
$30K from Thiokol Corporation to determine thermal heating of Atlas thruster
during re-entry.
1987 - 1988
$30K from Morton Thiokol to analyze piecewise circular spline algorithm as
part of Challenger Redesign Effort.
INVITED TALKS
February 2006 SIAM Conference on Parallel Computing in San Francisco. minisymposium.
“Cache Efficient Householder Bidiagonalization for LAPACK”
October 2001
SIAM conference on Applied Linear Algebra in Raleigh, NC, “Cache Efficient
Reduction Bidiagonalization”, “ELMRES solution of sparse linear systems of
equations”.
June. 2001
CERFACS, Toulouse, France, Sparse days conference. “Sparse Householder
Bidiagonalization”.
Sept. 2000
CERFACS, Toulouse, France, "The ELMRES algorithm for solving sparse nonsymmetric linear systems."
July 2000
ICCAM, Leuven, Belgium, "Cache-Efficient Bidiagonalization".
June 1999
SIAM annual conference in Atlanta, “Cache-Efficient Reduction to Small Band
Form”.
Oct. 1998
Basic Linear Algebra Standards National committee (BLAST Forum)
Oct. 1998
“The ELMRES algorithm for solving sparse non-symmetric linear systems”,
IMACS conference in honor of David Young, Austin, TX.
June 1998
Basic Linear Algebra Standards National committee
Dec 1997
Basic Linear Algebra Standards National committee (BLAST Forum)
Oct. 1997
SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra at Snowbird, Utah. Minisymposium
presentation ``Gaussian Similarity Transformations In Computing Matrix
Eigenvalues."
April 1997
Washington State University, Mathematics Colloquium, ``Large Eigenvalue
Problems."
July 1995
Oak Ridge National Labs, ``BR Iteration."
July 1994
Oak Ridge National Labs, ``BHESS Reduction to Small Band Form."
Nov 1994
University of Central Florida Math. Seminar, ``Efficient Computation of
Eigenvalues."
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March 1993
University of Central Florida, ``Quasi-Circular Approximation."
Nov 1992
University of Florida, Quantum Mechanics Seminar, ``Efficient Computation of
Eigenvalues."
Nov 1991
University of Central Florida, Math. Seminar, ``Error Bounds for Derivatives of
Interpolating Polynomials."
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
Member of SIAM, AMS, IEEE and ACM.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
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National Computational Science Standards Committees: MPI (Message Passing Interface)
Forum, BLAST (Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines) committee
President of Brevard Chapter of Sigma Xi (1998-99)
Book reviews for JAMSA
Over 50 thesis and dissertation committees, math, CS, OR, various engineering disciplines.
Refereeing:
National Science Foundation proposals
Oxford University Press
Wiley & Sons publishers
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Simulation
Journal of Approximation theory
Simon & Schuster
Morgan & Kaufman
Approximation Theory and its Applications
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Stochastic Analysis
Computational and Applied Mathematics
Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics
COMMUNITY SERVICE
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Delegate to Wake County democratic convention 2006
Chair of Florida Tech faculty senate welfare committee 2000-2001.
Florida Tech faculty senate 1999-2001
City Commissioner for Town of Melbourne Village (1990-1995).
Chair of Public Works Committee of Melbourne Village (1993-1998).
HOBBIES
Enjoy playing the Piano, Clarinet and Saxophone with community jazz band . Jogging with my
slow, old dog. Hiking & bird watching. Enjoy reading and going to the opera when possible. Have
been known to find a volleyball game.
PUBLICATIONS
Numerical analysis
G, W. Howell, J. W. Demmel, C. T. Fulton, S. Hammarling, and K. Marmol, “Cache Efficient
Householder Bidiagonalization”, submitted to ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, April
2006. Preliminary version available at http://www.netlib.org/lapack/lawns/downloads/ (see
LAPACK Working Note 174).
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G. W. Howell and N. Diaa, "Algorithm 841: BHESS, cache efficient reduction to similar smallband Hessenberg form", ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, (March 2005).
Desmond Stephens and Gary Howell, “The Elementary Residual Method”, Contemporary
Mathematics, Vol. 275, pp. 107-116 (2001).
G. A. Geist, G. W. Howell, and D. S. Watkins, ``The BR Eigenvalue Algorithm", SIAM J. on Matrix
Analysis and Applications . Vol.20,4, pp. 1083-1098, (July 1999).
Gary W. Howell, ``Towards an Efficient and Stable determination of spectra of a general matrix
and a more efficient solution of the Lyapunov equation", Proceedings of the First World Congress
of Nonlinear Analysts IV, pp. 3913-3927, Tampa, Walter de Gruyter (1996).
G. W. Howell and G. A. Geist, ``Direct Reduction to a Near-Tridiagonal Form", Proceedings of the
ISCA 8th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, pp. 426-432 (1995)
G. W. Howell and G. A. Geist, ``Necessity of High Precision Arithmetic for Large-Scale
Computation", Proceedings of Neural, Parallel, and Scientific Computations 1, Atlanta (1995).
G. W. Howell and K. Rekab, ``Expected Conditioning for Eigenvalues of Randomly Generated
Matrices", Neural, Parallel, and Scientific Computations 3, 2, pp. 263-270, (June 1995).
Gary. W. Howell, ``Efficient Computation of Eigenvalues of Randomly Generated Matrices",
Applied Mathematics and Computation 66, pp. 9-24 (1994).
S.K. Sen and Gary Howell, ``Direct Fail-Proof Triangularization Algorithms for AX + XB = C with
Error-Free and Parallel Implementations", Applied Mathematics and Computation 50, pp. 255278, (1992).
Approximation Theory
Paul Godfrey and G. W. Howell, "A Three Term Recurrence for Computing Approximate Euler,
Bernoulli, and Genocchi Numbers", Bulletin of the Marathwanda Mathematical Society (Dec.
2001)
S. G. Deo. and G. W. Howell, "A Highway to Trigonometry", Bulletin of the Marathwada
Mathematical Society Vol 1, pp. 26-62, (Dec 2000).
Gary Howell, ``Generalizations of the Cauchy Remainder", Proceedings of International
Conference on Conjectures in Approximation Theory, Sofia, Bulgaria (June 1993).
Gary Howell, ``Derivative Error Bounds for Lagrange Interpolation", Journal of Approximation
Theory 67, 2. pp. 164-173 (1991).
Gary Howell, ``Conditioning of Lidstone Polynomial Interpolations", Proceedings of 6th S.E.
Approximation Theory Conference, (1991).
A. K. Varma and Gary Howell, ``Best Error Bounds for Derivatives in Two Point Birkhoff
Interpolation Problems", Journal of Approximation Theory 38, 3, (July 1983).
Cryptography
V. Lakshmikanthan, S. K. Sen, and G.W. Howell, ``Vectors vs. Matrices, p-inversion,
cryptographic applications, and vector implementation", Neural, Parallel \& Scientific
Computations Vol 4, 2, pp. 129-140, (June 1996).
Differential Equations
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K.N. Murty, G. W. Howell, and G.V.R.L. Sarma, "Two Multi point Non-Linear Lyapunov Systems
Associated with an nth Order Non-Linear System of Differential Equation--Existence and
Uniqueness", Mathematical Problems in Engineering, (2000)
K. N. Murty, G. W. Howell and S. Sivasundaram, ``Two (multi) Point Nonlinear Lyapunov
Systems, Existence and Uniqueness", Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications,
pp.505-515, (July 1992).
K. N. Murty, Gary Howell, and S. Sivasundaram, ``Two Point Boundary Value Problems
associated with a System of First Order Non Linear Impulse Differential Equations", Applicable
Analysis 51, pp. 303-313, (1993).
Gary Howell and V. Laskhmikantham, ``A New Monotone Iterative Technique for Solution of
Nonlinear Systems of Differential Equations", Applicable Analysis 39, pp. 113-118, (1990).
Fluids
Gary Howell, Pavlos Kairis, and Kamel Rekab, ``Monte Carlo Simulation of Dispersion in Slow
Oscillatory Flow", Journal of Mathematics and Physical Sciences 27, 4, pp.257-269, (1993).
Gary Howell, ``Isotope Separation by Oscillatory Flow", Physics of Fluids 31, 6, (1988).
U. H. Kurzweg, G. W. Howell and M. J. Jaeger, ``Enhanced dispersion in oscillatory flows",
Physics of Fluids 27, 5, (1984).
Splines
Gary Howell, L.V. Fausett, and D. Fausett, ``Quasi-Circular Splines, a Shape Preserving
Algorithm", CVGIP: Graphical Models and Image Processing 55, 2, pp. 89-97, (1993).
Gary Howell and A. K. Varma, ``0-2 Spline Interpolation With Quartic Splines", Numeric
Functional Analysis and Optimization, (1991).
Gary Howell, ``Optimal Error Bounds for Two Even Degree Tridiagonal Splines," Journal of
Applied Mathematics and Simulation 3, pp. 117-134, (1990).
Gary Howell, ``Shape Generation by Linear Deformation of Circular Splines", Proc. 6th Texas
A\&M Conf. on Approximation Theory 1, pp. 333-336, Academic Press, (1989).
Gary Howell and A. K. Varma, ``Best Error Bounds for Quartic Spline Interpolation", Journal of
Approximation Theory 58, 1, (July 1989).
Some Technical reports
Benchmarking: "Comparison of Opteron and Xeon Blades", G. Howell and E. Sills,
http://www.ncsu.edu/itd/hpc/Documents/Publications/gary_howell (April 2006).
Benchmarking: “Using SHMEM for Low-Latency Communication on the Compaq SC40 and
SC45”, G. W. Howell. Pp. 30-31 The Resource, U.S. Army Research and Development Center
Information Technology Laboratory, Fall 2003.
Numerical Analysis: Oak Ridge Technical Report: ``Error Analysis of Reduction to Similar
Banded Hessenberg Form”, G.W. Howell, G.A. Geist, and T.H. Rowan. ORNL/TM-13334, March,
1998.
Splines: Technical Report: ``Mathematical Evaluation of Sine-Bar Measuring Device", with
Donald W. Fausett and Laurene V. Fausett, Morton Thiokol, contract 7MF103, (1987)
Thermal Analysis Technical Report: ``A Finite Difference Routine for Solving Time - dependent
Heat Flux for Composite Materials", delivered to Thiokol Corporation, (April 1989).
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Thermal Analysis: J.I. Frankel, T.P. Wang, and G.W. Howell, ``The Use of the Finite Integral
Transform Technique for Thermal Analysis in Microelectronic Chip Modules", 5th Int. Conf. on
Numerical Methods for Thermal Problems, Montreal, Canada, (June 1987)
Recent Conference Proceedings
Y. Zhang, X.-M. Hu, G. W. Howell, E. Sills, J. D. Fast, W. I. Gustafson Jr., R.A "Modeling
Atmospheric Aerosols in WRF/Chem". Extended abstract for 2005 Joint WRF/MM5 User’s
Workshop, 27-20 June, 2005, Boulder, CO. 2005
Gary Howell, Charles Fulton, Sumit Malhotra, Jim Parker. Cache Efficient Householder
Bidiagonalization” 2003 SIAM Conference on Applied Linear Algebra. July 16-19, Williamsburg,
VA.
P. Angeli, O. Basset, C. Fulton, G. Howell, R. Hsu, D. Richardson, A. Sawetprawhichkal, M.
Schuster, H. Thompson, S. Wilberscheid, Some Issues in Efficient Implementation of a Vector
Based Model for Document Retrieval The 2001 International Symposium on Information Systems
and Engineering(ISE'2001). June 25-28, 2001. Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
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