Vrutant Mehta

About Vrutant Mehta

Vrutant Mehta is a Ph.D. candidate in Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he works with Dr. Robert Fisher in the computational astrophysics group.

His research pairs theories with large-scale supercomputer simulations to understand the origins of Type Ia supernovae, among the brightest transients in the universe. They seed the cosmos with heavier elements like silicon, calcium, and iron — the raw material of planets, and of life — which are forged by nucleosynthesis processes in these explosions. Much of Vrutant's work lives on the numerical side, where he actively develops higher-order implicit solvers for stiff systems of ordinary differential equations, and studies methods for hyperbolic and elliptic partial differential equations. He also explores ways to combine the robustness of these classical methods with the efficiency of machine-learning approaches to solve the systems of nonlinear differential equations that arise in physical modeling.

Before starting his doctorate, Vrutant earned an M.S. in Physics. He then spent a year as a Research Computing Facilitator at the Center for Scientific Computing and Data Research (CSCDR), helping researchers scale and optimize scientific codes for high-performance parallel computing.

Away from research, Vrutant enjoys swimming, working out, and cooking authentic Indian cuisine.