Gus Fest 2019

Come celebrate the approaching anniversary of Gus Evrard’s 60th tour around the Sun!

A first-generation computational cosmologist, Gus helped launch a revolution by demonstrating the feasibility of direct, multi-fluid hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy and larger scale cosmic structure formation. The field of cosmology now relies on such realizations of virtual universes as an essential complement to observational data and theoretical models; the “third paradigm” of modern science in the language of the late Jim Gray. The multiple matter components of the universe are especially accessible to observation in giant clusters of galaxies, systems for which Gus and his collaborators have a particular affinity.

In the Office of Academic Innovation at Michigan, Gus is team leader and evangelist for two digital services: Academic Reporting Tools, offering factual summaries of courses, instructors and degrees presented as decks of cards (think Pokémon); and Problem Roulette, providing students access to locally authored, topically organized problems used for summative assessment in past class offerings at U-M. These tools have served over 100,000 students on the Ann Arbor campus over the past decade, and Problem Roulette was awarded a 2019 Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize.