Abstract
This talk discusses research gaps and future directions for digital twins, with a focus on interdisciplinary research needs for mathematical, statistical and computational foundations of digital twins. I will discuss the major findings and conclusions from the 2024 National Academies study on Foundational Research Gaps and Future Directions for Digital Twins, and provide some thoughts on how the landscape of challenges and opportunities has changed since the study report.
Speaker
Karen E. Willcox, The Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Speaker Bio
Karen E. Willcox is Director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Before joining the Oden Institute in 2018, she spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the founding Co-Director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering and the Associate Head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, she worked at Boeing Phantom Works with the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group. She is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Fellow of the US Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM), and member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). She was the recipient of the 2023 J.T. Oden Medal and the 2024 Theodore von Karman Prize.
Notes
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, from 11am to 12pm (US Central Time)
Video
Research Gaps and Future Directions
Karen E. Willcox
November 18, 2025