Ricardo Cortez is a Professor in the Mathematics Department and Director of the Center for Computational Science at Tulane University in New Orleans. He received BS degrees in mathematics (1986) and mechanical engineering (1988) from Arizona State University and his PhD degree in applied mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Before Tulane, Ricardo spent three years as an NSF postdoctoral researcher and Courant Instructor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York University.

Ricardo’s research is in computational fluid dynamics and numerical analysis. His current interests are developing and analyzing computational methods for the simulation of biological flows. Of particular interest are flows generated by swimming microorganisms, cilia, and other compliant, flexible boundaries in a fluid. As Director of the Center for Computational Science, Ricardo constantly looks for potential collaborations among experimentalists and computational scientists in areas of biomedical engineering, environmental sciences, material sciences, and other disciplines that are well represented at Tulane.

Ricardo serves on the Editorial Board of the American Mathematical Monthly, was co-Chair of the SIAM annual meeting in 2006, and has co-organized several mathematics conferences in the USA and abroad. Since 1990, Ricardo has been active in efforts to increase the number of underrepresented groups in mathematics. He is a member of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), where he organizes events for its annual conference and has organized several Diversity Workshops at the SIAM conferences. Ricardo has served since 2004 on MSRI’s Human Resources Advisory Committee (HRAC) and became the HRAC Chair in 2007 and Co-Chair in 2009.