Graduate Student Bangda Zhou has won the Best Student Paper Award, 2nd place, in the student paper competition of the 31st International Review of Progress in Applied Computational Electromagnetics (ACES 2015), held in Williamsburg, VA in March 22-26. This paper is titled "Direct Finite Element Solver of Linear Complexity for Analyzing Electrically Large Problems". Bangda Zhou is advised by Prof. Dan Jiao.

In this paper, a fast direct finite element solver of linear (optimal) complexity is developed for the electromagnetic analysis of electrically large problems. The linear complexity of this direct solver in CPU time and memory consumption is demonstrated by both theoretical analysis and numerical experiments. On a single 3 GHz CPU core, this solver has successfully solved an electrodynamic system matrix of over 22.8 million unknowns resulting from an industry full package in 16 hours with first-principles-based full-wave accuracy; it has also rapidly analyzed large-scale antenna arrays of over 73 wavelengths. Comparisons with state-of-the-art direct solvers have demonstrated the clear advantages of this direct solver.