Country of Residence
Discipline(s)
Institution
Universidad de Chile, Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Research Interests
N/A
Biography
Felipe sadly passed away in March 2017.
In 1996 he had received a Mathematical Engineering degree from Universidad de Chile. In 1998 he obtained a PhD in Applied Mathematics from U. de Chile and UniversitÂŽ de Montpellier in France (sandwich thesis). His basic research focused on the development of numerical algorithms based on the combination of penalty with trajectory methods. He described it like this:
“The basic idea consists in adding to the criterion to be optimized (the minimization of a cost/energy or the maximization of a benefit) a term which penalizes the violation of certain constraints on the solution. Then the optimization problem is formulated as a set of ordinary differential equations, whose equilibrium points correspond to optimal solutions.”
In regard to the theoretical foundations and computational aspects of such methods, Felipe Alvarez had published about 25 papers in international journals and had been the advisor of 3 PhD students. Furthermore, he had been interested in some applied problems from the Mining Industry. From 2007 until his death in 2017, he was the Deputy Director of the Laboratory on Geomechanics of the Center of Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of U. de Chile, supported by contracts with CODELCO (Chile’s state-owned copper company), his task there was to develop new computational tools to assist the design for rockmass instability in underground mining operations. This was conducted in collaboration with experts on several disciplines like Physics and Geology as well as Civil, Mechanical and Mining Engineering. Concerning administrative duties, he served as Chair of the Mathematical Engineering Department of U. de Chile (2006-2008). He was the Scientific Director of the Millennium Science Institute on Complex Engineering Systems (2007-2010), an interdisciplinary center for excellence which gathers about 30 tenured researchers in the areas of Operations Research, Transportation, Energy, Industrial Organization and Mathematical Optimization.
His last position was serving as the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of U. de Chile.