PhD student Kun Wang passed the PhD qualification exam

My PhD student Kun Wang has successfully defended his PhD qualification exam. His PhD thesis proposal "From multi-scale modeling to meta-modeling of poromechanics problems" is examined by the committee consisted of Santiago and Roberta Calatrava Family Professor George Deodatis (CEEM), and Fu Foundation Professor Qiang Du, and myself. In the proposed meta-modeling approach, Kun proposes a new method in which one uses a directed multi-graph to represent mechanics knowledge and then uses AI to form a directed graph that leads to a constitutive law. Furthermore, the AI also learns to improve its skill to write constitutive laws through practicing. Unlike previous ML which often leads to blackbox predictions and demands large amount of data, the resultant model is interpretable by human, can be trained with the same amount of data as the hand-crafted counterpart and yet much faster than sub-scale simulations. 

We thank all the committee members for their insightful questions, comments and time.

Kun Wang joined the research group in 9/2014, first as master student, then advanced to PhD in 1/2015.  His thesis focuses on the multiscale modeling and meta-modeling of porous media across multiple length and temporal scales. He has published 7 papers (including 4 CMAME papers) of which he served as the first author to 6 of them.  His work is supported by ARO, AFOSR, DOE, NSF and Columbia Engineering Seed Grant. His achievement and contribution to our research group are exemplified in the published papers, which are listed below. His recent work on data-driven multiscale modeling of porous media has been awarded him a travel grant to present at the Santa Fe Meshless workshop and selected as one of the finalists in the WCCM poster competitions (along with two other group members SeonHong Na and Eric Bryant). The slides of the qualification exam can be found at the bottom of this post. 

Congratulations for advancing to the final chapter of your PhD study, Kun! 

​Published Work:

• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, A semi-implicit discrete-continuum coupling method for porous media based on the effective stress principle at finite strain, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering,  doi:10.1016/j.cma.2016.02.020, 2016. [DRAFT]
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, Anisotropy of a tensorial Bishop's coefficient for wetted granular materials, Journal of Engineering Mechanics, doi:10.1061/(ASCE)EM.1943-7889.0001005, 2015. [DRAFT] [Bibtex]
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, S. Salager, S. Na, G. Khaddour, Identifying material parameters for a micro-polar plasticity model via X-ray micro-CT images: lessons learned from the curve-fitting exercises, accepted, International Journal of Multiscale Computational Engineering, 2016. [DRAFT]
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, A unified variational eigen-erosion framework for interacting fractures and compaction bands in brittle porous media, doi:10.1016/j.cma.2017.01.017, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 2017. [DRAFT]
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun,   A multiscale multi-permeability poroplasticity model linked by recursive homogenizations and deep learning​, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 334(1):337-380, doi:10.1016/j.cma.2018.01.036, ​2018. 
• R. Gupta, S. Salager, K. Wang, W.C. Sun, Open-source support toward validating and falsifying discrete mechanics models using synthetic granular materials Part I: Experimental tests with particles manufactured by a 3D printer, Acta Geotechnica, doi:10.1007/s11440-018-0703-0, 2018. 
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, updated Lagrangian LBM-DEM-FEM coupling model for dual-permeability porous media with embedded discontinuities, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 10.1016/j.cma.2018.09.034, 2018. 
• K. Wang, W.C. Sun, Meta-modeling game for deriving theoretical-consistent, micro-structural-based traction-separation laws via deep reinforcement learning, under review.