Shaun Forth

Biography

Shaun started his research career as an applied mathematician and was awarded his PhD, concerned with morphological and hydrodynamic instabilities in binary alloy solidification, by Bristol University in 1990. He then spent 5 years at BAE Systems' Sowerby Research Centre developing computational fluid dynamics algorithms and software for transonic and supersonic aerodynamics with an emphasis on methods for shocks and adaptive meshing. In 1994 Shaun joined Cranfield University as a lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the Shrivenham campus. Since then, has built up an international research reputation in the field of Algorithmic (Automatic) Differentiation (AD). This has involved both developing new computer packages for differentiating programs written in Fortran and Matlab, and also applying AD techniques to computational fluid dynamics solvers for industrial partners such as: QinetiQ, BAE Systems Ltd, Airbus UK. He is actively involved in the international AD community and was co-editor of Recent Advances in Algorithmic Differentiation, the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automatic Differentiation, July 2012. Shaun, Emmanuel Tadjouddine, John Pryce and John Reid, were the first to implement the vertex elimination algorithm for automatic differentiation using compiler-like source transformation methods and demonstrated that such an approach could greatly improve the efficiency of automatically generated code for calculating Jacobians Between 1998 and 2006 Shaun was involved in the development of the research codes Air3D and Air3Dfft, which are well known in the blast loading and hazard assessment community. This work was performed in conjunction with civil engineers and former colleagues Dr Peter Smith and Dr Tim Rose. This work has now been superseded by the development of the commercialised ProSAir package.

Research Interest

Shaun has an international research reputation in the field of Algorithmic (or Automatic) Differentiation, the differentiation of functions specified by computer programs. He led, with colleagues Patrick Farrell (University of Oxford), Andreas Griewank (Yachaytech University), Paul Hovland (Argonne Labs.) and Jens-Dominik Mueller (Queen Mary University of London) the organisation of the 7th International Conference on Algorithmic Differentiation held in Oxford in September 2016.