# Charbel Farhat

Charbel Farhat is the Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where he is also a professor in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. From 2008 to 2023, he chaired the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, serving from 2022 to 2023 as its inaugural James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair. He also directed the Stanford-King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Center of Excellence for Aeronautics and Astronautics (2014--2024) and served on multiple national advisory boards, including the Space Technology Industry-Government-University Roundtable (2017--2023), the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (2015--2019), and the Bureau of Industry and Security's Emerging Technology and Research Advisory Committee (2008--2018). From 2007 to 2018, he was Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at Stanford. Recognized by the U.S. Navy as a Primary Key-Influencer, he flew with the Blue Angels during Fleet Week 2014.
He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and is a member of three national academies: the National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), and the Lebanese Academy of Sciences. His honors include a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the Department of Defense and Docteur Honoris Causa degrees from Ecole Normale Superieure Paris-Saclay, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, and Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers. He is a laureate of the Takreem AMERICA Foundation for Scientific and Technological Achievement and an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering.
Farhat is a Fellow of several professional societies, including the AIAA, ASME, IACM, SES, SIAM, USACM, and WIF. He was knighted in the Order of Academic Palms and awarded the Chevalier Medal by the Prime Minister of France. Among his many distinctions, he has received the Lifetime Achievement Award and Spirit of St. Louis Medal from the ASME, the Ashley Award for Aeroelasticity, Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Award, Collier Aerospace HyperX/AIAA Structures Award, and Journal Authors Seminar Award from the AIAA, as well as the Computational Fluid Dynamics Award from SAE International. From the USACM, he has been awarded the John von Neumann Medal, the Computational and Applied Sciences Award, and the R.H. Gallagher Special Achievement Award. His contributions to computational mechanics have also been recognized with the Gauss-Newton Medal, the IACM Award, the Computational Mechanics Award, and the Young Investigator Award from the IACM. Additionally, he has received the Gordon Bell Prize and Sidney Fernbach Award from the IEEE Computer Society, the Grand Prize from the Japan Society for Computational Engineering and Science, the Modeling and Simulation Award from the Department of Defense, and the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and the White House.
From 2014 to 2024, Farhat served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and, from 2017 to 2024, of the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Computational Physics and a member of the editorial boards of eight international scientific journals.

## Career

Farhat began his academic career at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and Director of the Center for Aerospace Structures. In 2004, he joined Stanford University, where he currently holds the Vivian Church Hoff Chair of Aircraft Structures in the School of Engineering.
He is one of the lead developers of the Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting (FETI) method, a major development in the scalable solution of large-scale systems of equations on massively parallel processors. This method has been incorporated into several finite element production and commercial software programs in the U.S. and Europe. Notably, it enabled the structural dynamics code SALINAS at Sandia National Laboratories to secure a Gordon Bell Prize in the special accomplishment category for innovation.
Farhat also pioneered the three-field computational framework for solving coupled nonlinear fluid-structure interaction problems. His contributions include co-developing the concept of a Discrete Geometric Conservation Law (DGCL) and establishing its fundamental role in ensuring the nonlinear stability of CFD schemes on moving grids. These advancements led to the development of the nonlinear aeroelastic software AERO Suite, which has been applied to diverse challenges ranging from the shape sensitivity analysis of Formula 1 cars to the nonlinear flutter analysis of supersonic business jet concepts.

## Research monographs

* Charbel Farhat and Francois-Xavier Roux, Implicit Parallel Processing in Structural Mechanics, Computational Mechanics Advances, Vol. II, No. 1, pp. 1–124 (1994)
* Charbel Farhat, Domain Decomposition and Parallel Processing, Postgraduate Studies in Supercomputing, ed. FNRS/NFWO, Universie de Liege, Belgium, 1992.
* Charbel Farhat, An Introduction to Parallel Scientific Computations, Postgraduate Studies in Supercomputing, ed. FNRS/NFWO, Universite de Liege, Belgium, 1991.

## Major awards and honors

* Laureate of the Takreem America Foundation for Scientific and Technological Achievement (2025)
* SAE International Award for Computational Fluid Dynamics (2025)
* Olof B. Widlund Prize, Domain Decomposition Methods (2024)
* Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (2023)
* Docteur Honoris Causa (2022), Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts et Metiers
* The Commander's Public Service Award, Department of the Air Force (2019)
* Elected to the Lebanese Academy of Sciences (2017)
* Docteur Honoris Causa (2017), Ecole Centrale de Nantes
* Docteur Honoris Causa (2017), Ecole Normale Superieure Paris-Saclay
* The Spirit of St Louis Medal (2017) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (2011), American Society of Mechanical Engineers
* The Ashley Award for Aeroelasticity (2017) and the Structures, Structural Dynamics and Materials Award (2010), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
* The Grand Prize, Japan Society for Computational Engineering and Science (JSCES) (2017)
* Elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) (2016)
* Designated by the US Navy recruiters as a Primary Key-Influencer (2014) and flown by the Blue Angels during Fleet Week 2014
* The Gauss-Newton Medal (2014), the O.C. Zienkiewicz Award (2012), the Computational Mechanics Award (2002), and the John Argyris Award for Young Scientists (1998), International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM)
* Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2013)
* Knighted by the Prime Minister of France in the Order of Academic Palms (2011)
* Medal of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques (2011)
* The John von Neumann Award (2009), the J. Tinsley Oden Medal (2001), and the R. H. Gallagher Special Achievement Award (1997), United States Association of Computational Mechanics
* The Gordon Bell Prize (2002) and the Sidney Fernbach Award (1997), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society
* Modeling and Simulation Award (2001), United States Department of Defense
* Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989), National Science Foundation
* CRAY Research Award (1989)