Professor

Laboratory of Modeling and Imaging in Geosciences, University of Pau, France,

Institut universitaire de France, and INRIA Sud-Ouest MAGIQUE-3D

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My name is Dimitri Komatitsch, I am a Professor in the Laboratory of Modeling and Imaging in Geosciences at University of Pau, France and a member of Institut universitaire de France and of the INRIA Sud-Ouest MAGIQUE-3D research group.

My research interests include the numerical study of seismic wave propagation in geological structures, and the study of associated site effects related to steep topography and strong lateral heterogeneities. I use a variational formulation of the equations of elastodynamics, and solve it in three dimensions (3-D) using the so-called spectral-element method, a high-order version of the finite-element method, which can be shown to be very accurate at low cost, and particularly well suited to an efficient implementation on parallel computers. This work is done in collaboration with Prof. Jeroen Tromp at Princeton University (USA) and Prof. John Shaw at Harvard University (USA). We apply such numerical techniques to the study of wave propagation both at the scale of the Earth and in sedimentary basins, in particular in Southern California. The full source code of our software package SPECFEM3D is available open source from Geodynamics.org.

I also collaborate with Gordon Erlebacher (Florida State University, USA), David Michéa (BRGM, France) and Dominik Göddeke (Technical University of Dortmund, Germany) on GPU computing (i.e., computing on graphics cards) for seismic wave propagation. For more details, see our publications.

I also collaborate with Jesús Labarta and Rosa M. Badia (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Catalunya, Spain) on optimizing high-order finite-element codes on SMP machines. We analyze our codes using their ParaVer/DimeMás performance analysis software package.

I also collaborate with Roland Martin from University of Pau/CNRS/INRIA (France) and Steven D. Gedney (University of Kentucky, USA) on optimized and stabilized unsplit Perfectly Matched Layers, called unsplit Convolutional PML (C-PML) absorbing layers, for the seismic wave equation. We have developed unsplit Convolutional PMLs for isotropic and anisotropic media (Komatitsch and Martin, 2007) using a finite-difference in the time domain (FDTD) technique based on ideas introduced by Roden and Gedney (2000) in the context of electromagnetic wave propagation. We have also applied these ideas to poroelastic media (Martin, Komatitsch and Ezziani, 2008) and developed a stabilized variational form for isotropic or strongly anisotropic media modeled using high-order finite elements (Martin, Komatitsch and Gedney, 2008). For more details about PML and C-PML, see for instance Wikipedia about PML as well as our publications. For more details about finite differences in the time domain (FDTD), see for instance Wikipedia about FDTD. All our C-PML source codes are available open source.

Our laboratory is affiliated with CNRS as a joint reseach unit (UMR 5212) and member of a Research Federation (FR 2952). I was Deputy Director of UMR 5212 in 2005 and 2006, and in January 2007 I became the Director, for four years.

With some colleagues, we have founded an INRIA research project called MAGIQUE-3D, led by Hélène Barucq.

I collaborated with Swaminathan Krishnan from Caltech, USA, on the study of strong ground motion in Southern California, and on the three-dimensional nonlinear analysis of buildings based on his software package Frame3D.

I also worked with Christian Gout from University of Valenciennes, France, on better ways of approximating surfaces with large local variations, such as topographic and bathymetric elevation models, or complex three-dimensional geological structures with faults.

Before working in Pau, I was a Senior Research Fellow in Numerical Analysis and Geophysics in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena, California, USA, and in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, for five years.

I am a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).

List of publications

Curriculum Vitae

SPECFEM3D software package

SEISMIC_CPML software package

INRIA équipe-projet MAGIQUE-3D

Princeton Theoretical & Computational Seismology group

Barcelona Supercomputing Center

ShakeMovie Caltech

HPC-Europa program

Teaching

Genealogy: my ancestors / Généalogie: mes ancêtres

SVN CIG

MAGIQUE-3D October 2005 workshop

SPECFEM3D and SPECFEM3D_GLOBE are now used by many research groups worldwide:

Movie of the May 12, 2008, Sichuan (China, Ms = 8.0, Mw = 7.9) earthquake computed at CINES/GENCI (Montpellier, France) with our 3D seismic wave propagation code SPECFEM3D:

June 2010: a multi-GPU port of SPECFEM3D wins the BULL Joseph Fourier supercomputing award:

May 2005: our 3D seismic wave propagation code SPECFEM3D on the cover of "Science", for the calculation of the great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004.

November 2003: SPECFEM3D wins the Gordon Bell Award for Best Performance at the ACM/IEEE SuperComputing'2003 conference in Phoenix, Arizona:

Read our Gordon Bell Award paper

See the Press release

The source code of SPECFEM3D is available open source from Geodynamics.org.

Dimitri Komatitsch
Laboratoire de Modélisation et d'Imagerie en Géosciences de Pau (MIGP) UMR 5212
Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour and INRIA MAGIQUE-3D
Bâtiment IPRA MIGP - Avenue de l'Université
BP 1155
64013 Pau Cedex
FRANCE

For visitors, here are a list of hotels, several maps and detailed explanations about how to reach our building.

email: (preferred)
Here is my GPG public key.
Secretary (Mr Bruno Demoisy or Mme Joëlle Arriulou): (+ 33) 5 5940 7432 (please use email instead if possible)
e-fax: (+ 1) 309 403 4447 - from the USA, (309) 403 4447 - or (+ 33) 5 5940 7415