Sam Van Fleet

About Me

I’m a Postdoctoral Associate in Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University. My research focuses on structure-preserving numerical methods for PDEs and particle methods for kinetic equations. I have teaching experience across undergraduate and graduate levels, including differential equations, scientific computing, and numerical methods.

Previously, I held a Pearson Fellowship at the University of Washington. I completed my PhD in Applied Mathematics at Iowa State University in 2022.

Research Interests

My broad research interests are numerical analysis and computational mathematics.  Specifically, I am interested the development and analysis of numerical methods for partial differential equations (PDE), including kinetic equations that model plasma, hyperbolic systems, and PDEs that model computational fluid dynamics.  

Publications

Link to Google Scholar

1. Samuel Q. Van Fleet and Jesse Chan. “On the choice of viscous discontinuous Galerkin discretization for entropy correction artificial viscosity methods.” manuscript in preparation.

2. James A. Rossmanith and Samuel Q. Van Fleet. “Maximum-Taylor Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes for Linear Hyperbolic Systems”. manuscript in preparation.

3.  Jingwei Hu, Samuel Q. Van Fleet, and Andy T. S. Wan. “Fully Discrete Energy-Dissipative and Conservative Discrete Gradient Particle Methods for a Class of Continuity Equations”. In: SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing 47.3 (2025), A1835–A1857. doi: 10 . 1137 / 24M1674054. eprint: https://doi.org/10.1137/24M1674054. url: https://doi.org/10.1137/24M1674054.

4. Jos´e A. Carrillo, Jingwei Hu, and Samuel Q. Van Fleet. “A Particle Method for the Multispecies Landau Equation”. In: Acta Applicandae Mathematicae 194.1 (2024), p. doi: 10.1007/s10440-024-00692-9. url: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10440-024-00692-9.

Teaching:

Rice University:

• • Spring 2026: CMOR 527 Discontinuous Galerkin Methods

  • Fall 2025: CMOR 304 Differential Equations in Science and Engineering

  • Spring 2025: CMOR 304 Differential Equations in Science and Engineering

  • Fall 2024: CMOR 304 Differential Equations in Science and Engineering

University of Washington:

• Winter 2024: AMATH 301 Beginning to Scientific Computing

• Autumn 2023: AMATH 351 Introduction to Differential Equations and Applications

•  Winter 2023: AMATH 351 Introduction to Differential Equations and Applications

•  Fall 2022: AMATH 351 Introduction to Differential Equations and Applications

University of St. Thomas (MN):

• Summer 2021: MATH 114 Calculus II: Techniques of integration; applications of integration; infinite series; parametric/polar equations. (WWW)

Iowa State University:

• Spring 2020:  MATH 143 Preparation for Calculus. (WWW)