Heliophysics Modeling & Simulation Project (HMS)
Alan Wray
Computational Physicist, NASA Ames Research Center
Alan Wray develops simulation algorithms, codes, and models for simulating stellar convective zones and atmospheres and reentry radiative transfer.
Bio
In his 35-year career at NASA, Alan has developed an extensive collection of incompressible, compressible, and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence simulations and associated algorithms. His broad experience includes development of computer languages and compilers, large-scale simulation of turbulent flows, radiative heat transfer in partially to fully ionized gases, and development of large parallel codes for shared-, distributed, and mixed-memory types. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech in 1973, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center and at NASA Ames Research Center, and then joined Ames in 1978.
Research Interests
Alan’s current research interests include: non-local-thermodynamic-equilibrium (NLTE) simulations of MHD plasmas, efficient computation of multi-species radiative transfer, and simulation of planetary disks and planet formation. He is also involved in programming methodologies for parallel computers.
See selected publications