Carol Woodward Helps Scientists Solve Diverse Challenges


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Carol Woodward joined the Lab’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) in 1996, first as a postdoc and then as a staff researcher. CASC has developed a reputation over the years, she notes, as an organization that can solve tough problems, so she and her colleagues are asked to consult on a diverse array of projects. “It’s nice because it means I can work at the same place and not just do one thing for a long time—I get to keep changing what I work on,” she says. She is the principal investigator for SUNDIALS, a package of time integrators and nonlinear solvers that garners more than 100,000 downloads annually and is used in myriad simulation-dependent applications. Her group’s technical contributions to the software have modernized it and upgraded its functionality for more than two decades, enabling it to scale to DOE’s highest-end computing systems. With its innovative solvers and flexibility for a variety of computing systems, SUNDIALS was awarded the prestigious 2023 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering. In 2022 Woodward was promoted to Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, LLNL’s highest technical job classification level. Read more about her work.