College of Sciences
Computational Science Research Center Fiscal Year 2025-2026
Message from Leadership
Dear Donor, The Computational Science Research Center (CSRC) continues to grow, with exciting projects led by our faculty and students with new opportunities emerging each year. We are especially proud of the CSRC’s contributions to SDSU’s achievement of R1 status. This year, we celebrate the 26th anniversary of the CSRC, the 24th year of our Computational Science Ph.D. program, and the 22nd year of the Applied Computational Science and Engineering Student Showcase (ACSESS). We continue to advance research through projects supported by the NSF and DOE, including the MOLE project and high-energy plasma fusion research at SDSU. We congratulate our students who reached important milestones, including those who completed their master’s and Ph.D. degrees this year, and we welcome nine new master’s students and 13 new Ph.D. students this fall. We are deeply grateful for your support in building the CSRC Fellowship Endowment, which helps us support talented students and expand opportunities for future computational scientists.
Jose Castillo, Ph.D. Director and Professor, Computational Science Research Center
Philanthropy
Propelling the SDSU Community Forward Computational Science Advancement Fund The College of Sciences received generous support for the Computational Science Advancement Fund, which advances the mission of San Diego State University’s Computational Science Research Center. The center promotes interdisciplinary research and education by bringing together faculty and students from diverse scientific fields to solve complex problems through advanced computation and modeling. Contributions to the fund support innovative research, student training, and access to resources that prepare future leaders in computational science.
Computational Science Research Center student presenting their work during ACSESS 2026.
Student Spotlight
Thriving in the Aztec Experience Audrey Oliver, Class of 2029 Class Level: Ph.D. Candidate College: College of Sciences Major: Computational Science As a Ph.D. student in computational science, the College of Sciences has played a pivotal role in my academic and professional development. Through research opportunities, mentorship, and financial support, I have been able to pursue research as a member of the SDSU Disease Modeling Lab. The greatest impact on my experience has been the community I have found. Faculty mentors have challenged me to think critically, approach problems from new perspectives, and grow as an independent researcher. Their guidance has strengthened my technical skills and given me the confidence to pursue my research goals. Equally important have been the relationships I have built with peers and students. Collaborating with fellow researchers has reinforced the value of teamwork and interdisciplinary thinking, while mentoring undergraduate students has helped me grow as both a scientist and a leader. The College of Sciences has provided an environment where I have been challenged, supported, and inspired to reach beyond what I thought possible. I am grateful for the opportunities that continue to shape my education and future career.
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The College of Sciences has provided an environment where I have been challenged, supported, and inspired to reach beyond what I thought possible.
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Student Spotlight
Daisy Ulloa, Class of 2028 Class Level: Ph.D. Candidate College: College of Sciences Major: Computational Science I began my undergraduate studies at SDSU in 2018. Through opportunities in the College of Sciences, I joined Dr. Uduak George’s lab and discovered a passion for computational biology. Those experiences inspired me to return to SDSU to pursue a doctorate in computational science. As a graduate student, I have built collaborative relationships with researchers at SDSU and beyond, presented my work at conferences, and served as a teaching assistant. These experiences have expanded my research skills, professional network, and preparation for a career in academia and industry. The College of Sciences also provided opportunities to build community. As a member of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Student Chapter, I became chapter president and helped organize networking events that connected students with faculty and industry professionals. I am deeply grateful for the opportunities, mentorship, and community I have found in the College of Sciences. The experiences I gained as both an undergraduate and graduate student have shaped my academic and professional journey.
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The experiences I gained as both an undergraduate and graduate student have shaped my academic and professional journey.
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Points of Pride
Celebrating Shared Success Statistics of Interest The Computational Science Research Center (CSRC) is celebrating its 26th year in 2026. The CSRC has graduated 113 Ph.D. and 103 M.S. students since the program's inception. The CSRC has received $23,072,920 in extramural funding over the last three years. The CSRC will welcome 22 new graduate students in fall 2026, including 9 M.S. and 13 Ph.D. students. Recent Highlights Faculty and students are advancing research through major federally funded projects, including the NSF-supported Mimetic Operators Library Enhancement (MOLE) project and a Department of Energy initiative focused on building capacity for novel high-energy plasma fusion research at SDSU.
Research Funding
CSRC celebrates 26 years in 2026 and secured $23M+ in extramural funding over the last three years.
Graduate Pipeline
216 Master’s and Ph.D. graduates since inception, with 22 new graduate students expected in Fall 2026.
Faculty and Staff Achievements
Valeria Barra, Ph.D. Title: Assistant Professor, Applied and Computational Mathematics College: College of Sciences Achievement: Founded SDSU’s first Association for Women in Mathematics student chapter and serves as its faculty sponsor. She also co-authored a research paper with collaborators from Caltech, MIT, NASA JPL, and Google Research. Dr. Barra’s interdisciplinary work bridges applied mathematics, scientific computing, and high-performance simulation, with applications ranging from climate modeling to computer animation. Before joining SDSU in 2024, she served as a research software engineer at Caltech’s Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA), collaborating with MIT and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her work contributed to next-generation Earth system models designed to improve predictions of extreme weather events and inform climate policy. She also contributed to open-source scientific computing libraries, including libCEED and ClimaCore.jl, used in highperformance computing environments. Dr. Barra earned her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and completed a research internship at Pixar Animation Studios, where she developed software tools for animators. At SDSU, Dr. Barra teaches scientific computing and computational methods, emphasizing real-world applications of mathematics. She is an active mentor, supporting two undergraduate students, one master’s student, and two Ph.D. students. She also founded SDSU’s first Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) student chapter and serves as its faculty sponsor. Dr. Barra recently co-authored a research paper with collaborators from Caltech, MIT, NASA JPL, and Google Research in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES).
Faculty and Staff Achievements
Anna Rosen, Ph.D. Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Astronomy College: College of Sciences Achievement: Alex Escamilla, my first undergraduate research student at SDSU and a spring 2025 astronomy graduate, turned his senior thesis into a first-author publication in The Astrophysical Journal, a rare achievement for an undergraduate. He begins a Ph.D. in astronomy at UMass Amherst this fall. My work explores how stars and star clusters form and evolve, using simulations, multi-wavelength observations, and computational methods to connect theory with what telescopes observe. I am developing jaxstro, a JAX-native, GPU-accelerated ecosystem for differentiable astrophysics that links stellar populations, dynamics, and synthetic observations with Bayesian inference. The goal is to compare transparent models directly with next-generation survey data, including Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10year project that repeatedly images the southern sky and creates a time-lapse view of the universe. My path began as a California community college transfer student before completing a double major in physics and astrophysics at UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. Before joining SDSU, I held NASA Einstein and Institute for Theory and Computation fellowships at Harvard, followed by NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics and UC Chancellor’s Fellowships at UC San Diego. At SDSU, I bring research tools directly into the classroom. I created ASTR 596: Modeling the Universe from scratch as a computational astrophysics course built around “glass box” modeling. Students progress from Python and numerical modeling to Bayesian inference, neural networks, automatic differentiation, and JAX. My goal is to prepare students for an AI-driven world without outsourcing their thinking. Students may not use AI to write all their code; they remain responsible for understanding, testing, and defending their work. Instead, I teach AI literacy alongside coding and software engineering so students can thrive in a future where code is cheap, but coherence and scientific judgment are not.
Faculty and Staff Achievements
Stathis Charalampidis, Ph.D. Title: Assistant Professor, Applied and Computational Mathematics College: College of Sciences Achievement: Dr. Stathis Charalampidis recently received a Department of Defense grant with Dr. Symeon Mystakidis from Missouri University of Science and Technology to study quantum droplets. Charalampidis' research revolves around theoretical and computational studies of complex nonlinear dynamical systems arising in mathematical physics, condensed matter physics, nonlinear optics, materials science, and fluid mechanics. In the summer of 2023, he was a visiting professor at the Laboratoire de Mathématiques Raphaël Salem in Rouen, France. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and, recently, the Department of Defense. The first grant for which Charalampidis is the PI focuses on the development of computational techniques for studying collapse-type phenomena and rogue, or extreme, waves. He brings forth bifurcation analysis techniques to elucidate the configuration space of collapsing and rogue waves in self-similar frames in continuum and lattice dynamical systems. Furthermore, he is a co-PI on a DOE grant that focuses on the development of efficient computational techniques for studying plasma and exploring the parameter space of solutions therein by bringing forth high-performance computational techniques. Those techniques are pivotal for studying quantum droplets with Dr. Symeon Mystakidis of Missouri University of Science and Technology, a research program that has recently been supported by the Department of Defense. With Dr. Mystakidis, he plans to study the existence and stability of phases of matter in ultracold atomic physics environments and collaborate with experimentalists on their realization in the lab. He has mentored 22 undergraduate, eight M.Sc., and two Ph.D. researchers, as well as one postdoctoral research scholar, and is particularly proud of having undergraduate and graduate students as co-authors on six of his research papers. He is passionate about teaching and has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at UMass, Cal Poly, and SDSU.
Thank you for your generous support.
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