# Snezhana Abarzhi

Snezhana I. Abarzhi (Russian: Снежана Ивановна Абаржи, also known as Snejana I. Abarji) is an applied mathematician and theoretical physicist specializing in the dynamics of fluids and plasmas and their applications in nature and technology. Her research has revealed that instabilities elucidate dynamics of supernova blasts, and that supernovae explode more slowly and less turbulently than previously thought, changing the understanding of the mechanisms by which heavy atomic nuclei are formed in these explosions. Her works have found the mechanism of interface stabilization, the special self-similar class in interfacial mixing, and the fundamentals of Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities.

## Education and career

Education and career Snezhana Abarzhi was born and raised in the former Soviet Union, there are no publicly available documents on when exactly she was born, or any records from her teenage years. She pursued her higher education at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). This university is regarded as one of the most prestigious and rigorous technical universities in Russia, often compared to institutions like MIT. After accomplishing her bachelor’s degrees, she then earned a master's degree in physics and applied mathematics, summa cum laude, in 1990. She completed her doctorate in 1994 through the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics and Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, supervised by Sergei I. Anisimov.
Abarzhi held a position as a researcher for the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1994 to 1997 (on leave in 1997-2004). She came to the US in 1997 as a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and then in 1998 became an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. In 1999 she took a research position at Stony Brook University. In 2002 she briefly moved to a research professorship at Osaka University before returning to the US as a senior fellow in the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University. In 2005 she became a research faculty member at the University of Chicago and in 2006 she added a regular-rank faculty position as an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She also worked at Carnegie Mellon University from 2013 to 2016 before moving to the University of Western Australia as professor and chair of applied mathematics.
Abarzhi's research has led her to join the Committee on Scientific Publications of the American Physical Society. This also led her to join organized conferences and programs covering a few different topics such as non-equilibrium dynamics of interfaces, turbulent mixing, and beyond. Her strong ethic has put her in a strong position in our Women in STEM today.
In 2020 Abarzhi was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) this was from after a nomination from the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, "for deep and abiding work on the Rayleigh-Taylor and related instabilities, and for sustained leadership in that community". Not only is this a great personal accomplishment, but made significant scientific contributions, and she’s also played an important role in bringing researchers together, guiding scientific directions, organizing conferences, and mentoring others in the field.
In 2023, Abarzhi released “Invariant forms and control dimensional parameters in complexity quantification” posted by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Western Australia, located in Perth, WA, Australia. In this publication, she discusses non-equilibrium dynamics and its importance in natural and technological processes. Throughout her publication, she mentions many concepts, such as Real-world systems showing universal behaviors and symmetries, Scaling laws and spectral behaviors helping link the two phenomena, Symmetry and scaling principles providing insight into their theoretical differences, and many more.

## Selected publications

* Abarzhi, Snezhana I.; Bhowmick, Aklant K.; Naveh, Annie; Pandian, Arun; Swisher, Nora C.; Stellingwerf, Robert F.; Arnett, W. David (November 2018), "Supernova, nuclear synthesis, fluid instabilities, and interfacial mixing", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (37): 18184–18192, doi:10.1073/pnas.1714502115, PMC 6744890, PMID 30478062
* Abarzhi, Snezhana I.; Ilyin, Daniil V.; Goddard, William A.; Anisimov, Sergei I. (August 2018), "Interface dynamics: Mechanisms of stabilization and destabilization and structure of flow fields", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (37): 18218–18226, Bibcode:2019PNAS..11618218A, doi:10.1073/pnas.1714500115, PMC 6744915, PMID 30082395
* Abarzhi, Snezhana I. (April 2010), "Review of theoretical modelling approaches of Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities and turbulent mixing", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 368 (1916): 1809–1828, Bibcode:2010RSPTA.368.1809A, doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0020, PMID 20211884, S2CID 38628393
* Abarzhi, Snezhana I. (July 1998), "Stable steady flows in Rayleigh–Taylor instability", Physical Review Letters, 81 (2): 337–340, Bibcode:1998PhRvL..81..337A, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.81.337
* Abarzhi SI, Hill DL, Williams KC, Li JT, Remington BA, Arnett WD 2023 Fluid dynamics mathematical aspects of supernova remnants. Phys. Fluids 35, 034106. doi:10.1063/5.0123930
* Abarzhi SI, Sreenivasan KR 2022 Self-similar Rayleigh-Taylor mixing with accelerations varying in time and space. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2118589119. doi:10.1073/pnas.2118589119
* Ilyin DV, Abarzhi SI 2022 Interface dynamics under thermal heat flux, inertial stabilization and destabilizing acceleration. Springer Nat. Appl. Sci. 4, 197. doi:10.1007/s42452-022-05000-4
* Meshkov EE, Abarzhi SI 2019 On Rayleigh-Taylor interfacial mixing. Fluid Dyn. Res. 51, 065502. doi:10.1088/1873-7005/ab3e83, arXiv:1901.04578