Jacqueline H. Chen is an American

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations o ...

. She works in the Combustion Research Facility of

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Bas ...

, where she is a Senior Scientist. Her research applies

massively parallel Massively parallel is the term for using a large number of computer processors (or separate computers) to simultaneously perform a set of coordinated computations in parallel. GPUs are massively parallel architecture with tens of thousands of t ...

computing to the simulation of turbulent

combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combust ...

Education and career

Chen grew up as a child of Chinese immigrants in Ohio, and graduated from the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pu ...

with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1981. After earning a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1982 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, under the mentorship of Boris Rubinsky, she continued at Stanford University for doctoral study in the same subject. She completed her Ph.D. in 1989; her

doctoral advisor A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...

at Stanford was Brian J. Cantwell. She has worked at Sandia since finishing her education and is a pioneer of massively parallel

direct numerical simulation A direct numerical simulation (DNS)Here the origin of the term ''direct numerical simulation'' (see e.g. p. 385 in ) owes to the fact that, at that time, there were considered to be just two principal ways of getting ''theoretical'' results r ...

of turbulent combustion with complex chemistry . She has led teams of computer scientists, applied mathematicians and computational engineers on the co-design of combustion simulation software for

exascale computing Exascale computing refers to computing systems capable of calculating at least "1018 IEEE 754 Double Precision (64-bit) operations (multiplications and/or additions) per second ( exa FLOPS)"; it is a measure of supercomputer performance. Exasca ...

(10^18 flops).

Recognition

In 2018, Chen was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

"for contributions to the computational simulation of turbulent reacting flows with complex chemistry". In the same year, the

Society of Women Engineers The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is an international not-for-profit educational and service organization. Founded in 1950 and headquartered in the United States, the Society of Women Engineers is a major advocate for women in engineering and ...

gave her an Achievement Award, their top honor, and

the Combustion Institute The Combustion Institute is an educational non-profit, international, scientific and engineering society whose purpose is to promote research in combustion science. The institute was established in 1954, and its headquarters are in Pittsburgh, Penn ...

awarded her the

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Nea ...

Gold Medal, "for her exceptional skill in linking high performance computing and combustion research to deliver fundamental insights into turbulence-chemistry interactions". The Combustion Institute and the American Physical Society also named her as one of its fellows.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Jacqueline Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American women engineers American mechanical engineers American people of Chinese descent Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the Combustion Institute Computational fluid dynamicists Scientific computing researchers Ohio State University College of Engineering alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Sandia National Laboratories people 21st-century American women