Rate My Professor Hans Werner van Wyk

Hans-Werner van Wyk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Auburn University’s College of Sciences and Mathematics. He specializes in numerical analysis, with research focused on the identification and quantification of uncertainty in physical systems modeled by partial differential equations. Van Wyk earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in May 2012, with a dissertation titled “Variational Estimation of Uncertain Parameters in Distributed Parameter Systems” advised by Dr. Jeff Borggaard. His earlier degrees include an M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Pretoria in January 2008 (with distinction), a B.Sc. Honours in Mathematics of Finance in June 2005 (with distinction), and a B.Sc. in Mathematics of Finance in December 2003 (with distinction), all from the University of Pretoria.

Van Wyk joined Auburn University as Assistant Professor in August 2015 and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in March 2021. Prior to this, he served as Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University from July 2012 to June 2015. He has held teaching positions as Graduate Teaching Assistant at Virginia Tech from 2007 to 2012, Assistant Lecturer at the University of Pretoria from 2005 to 2006, and at Tshwane University of Technology in 2005-2006. Among his honors are the Robert K. Butz Award for Excellence in Teaching from Auburn’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics (2017–2019), Steeneck Fellowship for Outstanding PhD Candidate from Virginia Tech (2011), Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from Virginia Tech (2010), Hatcher Fellowship (2009), and Gensec Prize for most outstanding honors student in financial mathematics from University of Pretoria (2005). Selected publications include “Simultaneous inversion for the fractional exponents in the space-time fractional diffusion equation ∂_β_t u = − (−Δ)^(α/2) u − (−Δ)^(γ/2) u” (2019, Inverse Problems in Science & Engineering), “Clenshaw-Curtis type rules for statistics” (2019, SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing), “Power-law noises over general spatial domains and on non-standard meshes” (2015, SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification), “A uniqueness determination of the fractional exponents in a three-parameter fractional diffusion” (2020), and “Analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent Methods for the Decomposition of Random Tensors” (2020). He is a member of the American Mathematical Society and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and serves as ADAA Faculty Fellow.