MSU Research Foundation Distinguished Professor
Michigan State University
Dr. Andrew J. Christlieb is a University Research Foundation Professor of Mathematics with appointments in the Departments of Mathematics and Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. He is the founding director of the Center for Hierarchical and Robust Modeling of Non-Equilibrium Transport, a U.S. Department of Energy Mathematical Multifaceted Integrated Capability Center that brings together researchers from five universities and four national laboratories, and he is the director of the Center for High Order Plasma Turbulence Modeling for Z-Pinch (HighZ), an NNSA Focused Investigatory Center. He previously served as the founding chair of MSU’s Department of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering.
Christlieb’s research lies at the intersection of computational mathematics, plasma physics, multiscale modeling, and scientific machine learning. His group develops high-order and structure-preserving numerical methods, particle and kinetic algorithms, scalable implicit solvers, and data-driven reduced models for complex systems spanning multiple spatial and temporal scales. A central theme of his work is overcoming the curse of dimensionality while retaining the conservation laws, entropy structure, stability, and uncertainty information required for predictive simulation.
Within TEMPEST, Christlieb focuses on developing new closure hierarchies that connect kinetic, fluid, and turbulence descriptions of complex physical systems. He is particularly interested in structure-preserving scientific machine-learning closures that incorporate nonlocal transport, memory, hysteresis, and other nonequilibrium effects without sacrificing the mathematical properties of the underlying models. These methods are aimed at advancing predictive modeling, uncertainty-aware design, and scientific discovery for fusion energy, high-energy-density physics, and national-security applications. Christlieb received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2001.