Mini -Tutorial 1: Introduction to Uncertainty Quantification

Roger Ghanem is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the U of Southern California where he also holds the Tryon Chair in Stochastic Methods and Simulation. Ghanem's research is in the general areas of uncertainty quantification and computational science with a focus on coupled phenomena. He received his PhD from Rice University and had served on the faculty of SUNY-Buffalo and Johns Hopkins University before joining USC in 2005.

Uncertainty quantification (UQ) sits at the confluence of data, computers, basic science, and operation. It has emerged with the need to inform risk assessment with rapidly evolving science and to bring the full power of sensing and computing to bear on its management.
With this role, UQ must provide analytical insight into several disparate disciplines, a task that may seem daunting and highly technical. But not necessarily so.
In this mini-tutorial, I will present foundational concepts of UQ, showing how it is the simplicity of the underlying ideas that allows them to straddle multiple disciplines. I will also describe how operational imperatives have helped shape the evolution of UQ and discuss how current research at the forefront of UQ can in turn affect these operations.