Professor, School of Computing
Ph.D., University of Alberta, 1965
Professor Stenger's research interests include the
development of new methods of computation and the computer solution of
computationally difficult problems from science and engineering, such
as inverse problems, crack problems, flow problems and heat problems.
He developed the Sinc methods, which provide optimal algorithms in all
areas of engineering computation. He is currently writing, jointly
with Michael O'Reilly and Tao Zhang, a Sinc Tool Box
computer-based tutorial package to make these methods accessible to
users. One of his students (Kenneth Parker) has recently completed
his Ph.D. dissertation PTOLEMY: A Sinc-Collocation Mapping
Sub-System, which is a computer sub-package of Maple that
automates the solution of partial differential equations. Several of
his students have recently written or are presently writing computer
packages for solving a broad range of difficult engineering
problem--such as Navier-Stokes equations (Barkey and Vakili,
Narasimhan), Maxwell equations (Naghsh-Nilchi) based on his recently
discovered Sinc method of approximating indefinite convolutions, which
leads to a unified approach for solving elliptic, parabolic, and
hyperbolic differential equations. Another student (Ross Schmittlein)
is writing a package based on Sinc, constructing conformal maps.
Stenger and his former student O'Reilly have been developing methods
which make it possible to invert the Helmholtz equation without
computing the forward solution. During the next few academic years he
expects to extend these inversion methods so that they can be applied
to rendering, to visualization, to the determination of paths for
robots, and to the inversion of heat and electromagnetic problems for
medical and geophysical applications. Seven of his papers have been
accepted for publications during this past academic year.