photo of Steve Lantz  

Steven R. Lantz

Senior Research Associate

 
Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing

Welcome! Thanks for tuning in. As a computational physicist at the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing, I am interested in high-performance computers and how they can be used to model, simulate, and analyze the physical world. I have a special interest in studies of the dynamics of plasmas and fluids. My most active research collaborations are with teams developing software to optimize stellarator design for nuclear fusion energy (led by Prof. David Bindel), and to reconstruct particle tracks in the CMS detector at CERN (led by Prof. Peter Wittich - feature story). I also support the computational needs of the Laboratory of Plasma Studies (Prof. Charles Seyler).

For quite a few years I worked with the Turbulence and Combustion Group, led by Prof. Stephen B. Pope. Other prior work has included investigations of basic plasma instabilities in the solar convection zone, and simulations of diffraction-limited optical imaging through imperfect media.

In my role as technical consultant, I attempt to use my experiences on TACC's Frontera and Stampede2 systems, Intel-based servers like the Hermes server at LPS, and CAC's HPC clusters (including the former CATS cluster) to help others to port, run, and optimize their own applications on high-performance parallel computers. I also contribute to training materials for offered through the Cornell Virtual Workshop for Frontera, Stampede2, and other NSF-supported resources. I provide specialized HPC consulting support for CAC's Red Cloud resources, especially MATLAB Parallel Server in Red Cloud.

For Fall 2024, I was appointed as a Visiting Lecturer in Astronomy in order to co-teach Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics with Prof. Dong Lai. Back in Spring 2010 I lectured on solar physics for ECE 5860, Upper Atmospheric and Ionospheric Physics II, a course that I have taught previously for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (most recently in 2007 - flyer). In Spring 2009, I served as the instructor for CIS 4205, Effective Use of High Performance Computing, in the Faculty of Computing and Information Science (flyer).

In 2017, I was elected to membership on the Graduate Faculty of Cornell University, in the Graduate Minor Field of Computational Science and Engineering.

Awards:

Published work:

[Convection Cell] Undergraduate researchers:

Clark Amerault spent part of his senior year at Cornell (Summer and Fall 1999) working with me on simulations of solar supergranulation. He produced a report on our project featuring many nice MPEG visualizations. You may also want to visit a mini-poster with highlights from the video, "Bifurcations in 2D Rotating Magnetoconvection", which made its debut in November, 1998 at the APS Div. of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The visualizations in it were created with the help of the following undergraduates:

Adrienne and Michael put together the final version of the video, building on the work of Oleg and several other prior students listed below (Bryan, Cooke, Rudin, Sanders, Wright). This line of research has largely been carried out in conjunction with SPUR, the erstwhile Supercomputing Program for Undergraduate Research at the Cornell Theory Center (aka CTC, back when that was our name). A complete roster of my students from the SPUR era, along with links to their final project reports, follows.

Some favorite links:

Computing

UNIX Tutorial for Beginners

Solar physics

Solar images at SDAC
NASA/Marshall Solar Physics
Ulysses - Science - Primary Mission Results
Coronal mass ejection (CME) movies from SOHO/LASCO:
A Virtual Tour of the Sun
The Sun from The Nine Planets Solar System Tour (for a while it was also known as eightplanets.org, after Pluto was demoted!)
Sun from Views of the Solar System
Education at HAO

Space physics

Space Weather Conditions and 3-Day Forecast
Current Solar Wind Conditions from Rice Univ.
Spaceweather.com
Auroral Activity Observation Network
The Aurora Page at MTU
Red Sprites and Blue Jets

Astronomy

Transits of Venus
Stars and Constellations
Naked Eye Observations
A 3-year-old's perspective on the dilemma of daytime vs. nighttime astronomy
A 4-year-old's speculation on an alternate terrestrial gravity field
A 7-year-old's hypothesis on the consequences of alternate gravity

The logo museum:

        [CTC logo 1]     [CTC logo 2]     [CTC logo 3]

Pretty old stuff (but maybe still interesting?):

Steve Lantz booked.net [SRL as Tflops Rex]
[biker]
A plug for bike commuting

Last updated on 11/4/24 by Steve Lantz (steve.lantz ~at~ cornell.edu)