The Arctic is a complex environment, with porous media forming parts of the lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. In this talk, we present our work on the mathematical and computational modeling of phenomena of energy and mass transport, as well as of mechanical deformation in the Arctic soils; these are coupled to the processes in the atmosphere controlled by the Earth’s climate and weather.

We begin by exploring heat conduction and water flow involving the ice/water phase transitions in permafrost soils coupled to the processes in the snow cover.  While many aspects have been well studied by geophysicists using Darcy scale models based on empirical data, our approach works in silicio, aiming to find explanations and interpretations for these models starting at the pore-scale and scaling up.

We also outline the principles of robust and efficient computational algorithms for simulations from the pore- to the Darcy scales. Finally, we illustrate how these efforts can be used to build more and better models, which  is also important for applications beyond the Arctic, such as in biological tissue and extraterrestrial materials.

This work represents a joint effort with an incredible team of students and collaborators, who will be duly acknowledged in the presentation.

Malgorzata Peszynska received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Augsburg, Germany, and MS and Habilitation from Warsaw University of Technology. She held academic positions at the Polish Academy Of Sciences, Warsaw University of Technology, Purdue University, The University of Texas at Austin, and National Science Foundation of USA. Since 2003 she has been at Oregon State University where she is now a University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and 2022-25 Joel Davis Faculty Scholar. Her awards include the 2020 AAAS Honorary Fellow, 2021 SIAM Geosciences Career Prize, 2017 Kosciuszko Foundation College of Eminent Scientists,  and 2009-10 Fulbright Research Fellow.  She believes in “paying it forward” and held leadership and service positions including for SIAM Geosciences (2009-12) and on 7+ editorial boards; she directed 50+ postdocs, doctoral, masters and undergraduate research projects. Her research is in broadly defined applied and computational mathematics, with interdisciplinary applications and collaborations in geosciences (hydrology and oceanography), engineering, and material science.