Paul F. Fischer

Paul F. Fischer is a senior researcher at the Mathematics and Computer Science Division within the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences directorate at Argonne National Laboratory. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT and has held academic and research positions at Brown University and Caltech. He is a recognized leader in computational fluid dynamics and high-performance computing.

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, MIT, 1989
• Postdoctoral Research, MIT and Caltech
• Assistant Professor, Applied Mathematics, Brown University
• Mathematician, Argonne National Laboratory (1998–present)
• Senior Scientist, Argonne (promoted 2008)

His research focuses on numerical methods for partial differential equations, particularly spectral element methods, and their application to large-scale simulations of fluid dynamics and heat transfer. He is known for developing and applying the Nek5000 code for billion-gridpoint simulations on leadership-class supercomputers. His work supports nuclear reactor safety analysis through projects like SHARP and thermal striping studies.

Dr. Fischer is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), recognizing his contributions to computational science. His research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, including computing time through the INCITE program at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility.

He has mentored research and developed course materials, including for ME528, and collaborates on advanced CFD projects involving turbulence in complex geometries such as rod bundles and arterial flows. He leads efforts in scalable parallel algorithms and matrix solvers for incompressible flow simulations.