NJIT has appointed Catalin Turc, PhD, to the faculty of NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts in the department of mathematical sciences, an associate professor. His work focuses on designing numerical and analytical tools for solving challenging problems in diverse scientific and technological areas, including solar photovoltaic technology. He will join the talents of more than 20 other new faculty members on campus this fall. The newcomers will add momentum to NJIT’s strategic plan for making a major impact on the quality of life in the 21st century. This interdisciplinary initiative is focused on three vital areas: convergent life science and engineering, “digital everyware” — ubiquitous computing — and sustainable systems.The women and men joining NJIT to serve a growing student body bring expertise that spans diverse supporting clusters. These include advanced manufacturing, architecture design and construction, big data, biochemistry, business systems, material science and engineering, and sensing and control.
“NJIT’s academic status and interdisciplinary strategy have attracted people at various stages of their careers, and who offer NJIT both distinctive abilities and new resources,” says Provost Ian Gatley. “Enthusiasm for NJIT’s interdisciplinary commitment was apparent during the search process. Everyone interviewed spoke about how the problems they work on are inherently interdisciplinary, how they like to work on teams, how they look forward to collaborating with colleagues across disciplines.” Donald Sebastian, NJIT’s senior vice president for research and development, emphasizes that connecting with real-world issues is at the heart of expectations for a technological research university. “Academic disciplines are the core of the university and the framework for learning. However, their alignment with industries of the future is not as obvious as with those sectors that have prevailed over the last century. Our strategic research thrusts are designed to make those 21st-century connections explicit.” Convergent life science and engineering, digital everyware and sustainable systems — themes that transcend departments or colleges — shaped NJIT’s hiring plan, he adds.
Turc’s work requires developing innovative computational methods for faithfully simulating the complexities of the world around us. An educator as well as a researcher, his aim is to convey the beauty and effectiveness of mathematical theory, and to share the great satisfaction of using the power of computational mathematics to simulate physical reality.
Turc’s research interests belong to the broad area of computational electromagnetics and acoustics. The main goal of computational electromagnetics and acoustics is the design and implementation of numerical methods that can be used for efficient simulation of electromagnetic and acoustic wave interactions with complex material structures.
During the past few years, Turc has worked on a variety of problems related to fast, high-order frequency domain integral equation methods for acoustic and electromagnetic scattering problems in domains with complex material and geometrical features. He has developed analytical and computational tools that enable solutions for problems of fundamental significance involving applications such as electromagnetic interference and compatibility (electronic circuits), dielectric/magnetic coated conductors, composite metamaterials (photonic crystals and negative index materials), and solar cells.
Turc’s research has been especially productive with respect to:
• Well-conditioned integral equation formulations and fast, high-order solvers for scattering problems at high-frequencies in three dimensions
• High-order algorithms for the solution of partial differential equations (Laplace, Helmholtz, Maxwell equations) in domains with geometric singularities in two and three dimensions
• Wave propagation solvers in periodic structures in three dimensions
Support for Turc’s work has been provided by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Two AFOSR grants funded “Propagation and Scattering by Complex Arrangements of Dielectrics and Conductors.” The NSF provided a grant for “Efficient, Accurate and Rapidly Convergent Algorithms for Solutions of Wave Propagation Problems in Configurations Complex Material and Geometric Features.”
Turc comes to NJIT from the department of mathematics at Case Western Reserve University. He earned his PhD in mathematics at the University of Minnesota, and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mathematics at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania.