Polytopal Element Methods In Mathematics and Engineering (POEMS) 2026

Nov 9, 08:00 - Nov 12, 17:00

KAUST - Auditorium between B2 & B3

polytopal elements virtual elements Discontinuous Galerkin

Join POEMS 2026 to explore advances in polytopal numerical methods and their applications in fluid-structure interactions, porous media, geoscience, biology and fracture mechanics.

Overview

Polygonal and polyhedral meshes have attracted increasing interest in the development and analysis of numerical methods for approximating solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs). They provide a flexible framework for handling hanging nodes, different cell shapes within the same mesh and nonmatching interfaces, enabling the accurate representation of complex geometries, interfaces and heterogeneous media.

POEMS 2026 will bring together international researchers to discuss recent advances in polytopal numerical methods and their applications across mathematics, science and engineering. Discussions will explore applications in fluid-structure interactions, porous media, geoscience, biology, fracture mechanics and crack propagation, elasticity, plates and shells, and magnetohydrodynamics.

Taking place at KAUST Nov. 9–12, the workshop will feature plenary and invited talks, an industrial session and a poster session, providing opportunities to exchange research findings, discuss computational challenges and identify directions for future collaboration.

Program

All talks will take place at the Auditorium between Bld. 2 and Bld. 3.

Monday, November 9

10.00-10.30	Registration and Refreshment
10.30 - 10.45	Conference Opening with KAUST President Prof. Sir Edward Byrne
Session 1a	Chair: Daniele Boffi
10.45 - 11.15		Ricardo Ruiz Baier (plenary talk) Mixed virtual element methods for elastic and poroelastic stress-assisted diffusion
11.15 - 11.35		Gang Wang (invited talk) An interface-fitted virtual element method for Stokes moving interface problem
Session 1b	Chair: Giovanni Russo
11.35 - 11.55		Arbaz Khan (invited talk) Hybrid High-Order Discretizations of Sixth-Order Elliptic Problems: Mixed Formulations, A Priori and A Posteriori Error Analysis
11.55 - 12.05		Hodayfa Labbi (blitz talk) A quasi-norm for the Hybrid High order analysis of the p-Laplace problem
12.05 - 12.25		Ivan Fumagalli (invited talk) Polytopal discontinuous Galerkin methods for fluid-poroelastic interaction in saturated conditions
12.25 - 13.30	Lunch Break - Campus Diner Sea View Area
Session 2a	Chair: Arbaz Khan
13.30 - 14.00		Carlo Lovadina (plenary talk) Mixed Virtual Element Methods for Elasticity Problems
14.00 - 14.10		Huiteng Li (blitz talk) Towards CutFEM with Generalized Barycentric Coordinates on Polygonal Meshes: Stabilization and Quadrature
14.10 - 14.30		Aurelio Spadotto (invited talk) Hybrid Discretization of Friedrichs' systems
Session 2b	Chair: Vittorio Bauduin
14.30 - 14.50		Daniele Prada (invited talk) A Virtual Element Method on Polyhedra with Curved Faces
14.50 - 15.00		Roberto Nuca (blitz talk) Provable Error-Bounded Lossy Compression for Parametric Series in Finite-Dimensional Function Spaces
15.00 - 15.20		David Mora (invited talk) Virtual Element Method for Fourth Order Problems in Continuum Mechanics
15.20 - 15.45	Refreshment
...
19.30	Dinner - Al Marsa Restaurant

Tuesday, November 10

10.00 - 10.30	Refreshment
Session 3a	Chair: Andrea Borio
10.30 - 10.50		Juan Calvo (invited talk) Spectral multiscale virtual element spaces on irregular coarse partitions
10.50 - 11.20		Andrea Cangiani (plenary talk) High-Order general mesh dG for Curved Interfaces and Evolving Domains
11.20 - 11.40		Carsten Carstensen (invited talk) Local discontinuous Galerkin FEM for convex optimization
Session 3b	Chair: Vittorio Bauduin
11.40 - 11.50		Aparna Bansal (blitz talk) Numerical analysis for coupled multiphysics problems
11.50 - 12.10		Fadi Aldakheel (invited talk) Physics-based Machine Learning for Computational Engineering Across Scales
12.10 - 12.20		Luca Galimberti (blitz talk) Entropy-Stable Moving-Wall Boundary Conditions for High-Order ALE Discretizations
12.20 - 13.15	Lunch Break - Campus Diner Sea View Area
13.15 - 13.30	Group Photo - Campus Diner Waterfront
Session 4a	Chair: Najwa Alshehri
13.30 - 14.00		Lorenzo Mascotto (plenary talk) Sobolev-Poincare' inequalities for piecewise W^{1,p} and W^{2,p} functions over general polytopic meshes
14.00 - 14.20		Mats. G. Larson (invited talk) Discrete Extension and Cut Agglomeration for Raviart-Thomas and BDM Elements
14.20 - 14.30		Gioana Teora (blitz talk) The Zipped Finite Element Method for High-Order Approximation on Polygonal Meshes
Session 4b	Chair: Luca Galimberti
14.30 - 14.50		Giuseppe Vacca (invited talk) Virtual Element Methods on Moving Domains
14.50 - 15.10		Franco Dassi (invited talk) Virtual Element Method with Conforming and nonconforming faces applied to elasticity problems
15.10 - 15.20		Lijuan Fan (blitz talk) Optimization of large quiet zone in indoor environments using coded acoustic metasurfaces via boundary element method
15.20 - 15.45	Refreshment

Wednesday, November 11

10.00 - 10.30	Refreshment
Session 5a	Chair: Fabio Credali
10.30 - 11.00		Long Chen (plenary talk) Hybridizable Staggered Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Polyharmonic Equations on Polytopes
11.00 - 11.20		Dominik Michels (invited talk) From Volumes to Surfaces: Boundary Element and Hybrid Methods for Fluid Simulation
11.20 - 11.40		Lucia Gastaldi (invited talk) On the stabilization of the right hand side in the virtual element approximation of eigenvalue problems
Session 5b	Chair: Fabio Credali
11.40 - 11.50		Harpal Singh (blitz talk) Structure-Preserving Numerical Methods for Control-Constrained Linear Elasticity Equations
11.50 - 12.10		Ruchi Guo (invited talk) How flexible can polytopal elements be for VEM?
12.10 - 12.20		Giovanni Testa (blitz talk) ADEx-FNO: A Unified Ambient-Domain Framework for Fourier Neural Operators on Varying Geometries
12.20 - 13.30	Lunch Break - Campus Diner Sea View Area
Session 6	Chair: Daniele Boffi
13.30 - 14.00		Stefano Berrone (plenary talk) Stabilisation-free Virtual Element Method for 2D and 3D second-order elliptic equations
Industrial Session	Chair: Matteo Parsani
14.00 - 14.30		Roberto Ramos (invited talk) Simulation Growth and New Opportunities
14.30 - 14.50		Marco Scarpelli (invited talk) A GPU-enabled incompressible Navier-Stokes solver with OpenMP offloading
14.50 - 15.10		Umberto Perego (invited talk) FEM+VEM: a new paradigm to deal with meshing problems in engineering applications
15.10 - 15.45	Refreshment

Thursday, November 12

10.00 - 10.30	Refreshment
Session 7a	Chair: Stefano Berrone
10.20 - 10.30		Hamza Ruzayqat (blitz talk) Bayesian Anomaly Detection in a Variable-Order, Variable-Diffusivity Fractional Medium
10.30 - 11.00		Zhaonan Dong (plenary talk) hp-A Posteriori Error Analysis of dG and HHO Methods via Novel Conforming Reconstruction Operators, with an Extension to Polytopic Meshes
11.00 - 11.20		Emil Hossjer (invited talk) Convergence of p-multigrid methods for Hybrid High-Order (HHO) methods
11.20 - 11.40		Najwa Alshehri (invited talk) Robust Schur Complement Preconditioning for Fictitious Domain Interface Problems
Session 7b	Chair: Gioana Teora
11.40 - 11.50		Ajay Kumar (blitz talk) Mixed hybrid high-order methods for sixth-order problems
11.50 - 12.10		Sergio Gomez (invited talk) A discontinuous Galerkin method with fractal elements
12.10 - 12.20		Kaicheng Wang (blitz talk) Training-Free Shallow Neural Networks for PDEs with Geometry-Aware Neural Approximation
12.20 - 13.30	Lunch Break - Campus Diner Sea View Area
Session 8a	Chair: Stefano Zampini
13.30 - 14.00		Jerome Droniou (plenary talk) Discrete functional analysis for a polytopal complex
14.00 - 14.20		Rolf Krause (invited talk) Discretization and Solution Methods for Contact Problems in an Unfitted Finite Element Method
14.20 - 14.30		Raman Kumar (blitz talk) An Arbitrary-Order Augmented Lagrangian Discrete De Rham Scheme for Contact Mechanics with Tresca Friction
Session 8b	Chair: Roberto Nuca
14.30 - 14.50		Francesca Bonizzoni (invited talk) Stability-preserving discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Fisher-Kolmogorov equation: analysis and applications to Parkinson's disease
14.50 - 15.10		Fabio Credali (invited talk) Avoiding stabilization terms in virtual elements for eigenvalue problems: The Reduced Basis Virtual Element Method
15.10 - 15.20	Closing remarks
15.20 - 15.45	Refreshment

Workshop speakers

Plenary Speakers

Stefano Berrone, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Andrea Cangiani, SISSA, Italy
Long Chen, University of California, Irvine, USA
Zhaonan Dong, INRIA Paris, France
Jérôme Droniou, University of Montpellier, France
Carlo Lovadina, University of Milan, Italy
Lorenzo Mascotto, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Ricardo Ruiz-Baier, Monash University, Australia

Invited Speakers

Fadi Aldakheel, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany
Najwa Alshehri, Jubail Industrial College, Saudi Arabia
Francesca Bonizzoni, MOX - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Juan Gabriel Calvo, University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Carsten Carstensen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Fabio Credali, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Franco Dassi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Ivan Fumagalli, MOX - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Lucia Gastaldi, University of Brescia, Italy
Sergio Gomez, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Ruchi Guo, Sichuan University, China
Emil Hössjer, University of Montpellier, France
Arbaz Khan, IIT Roorkee, India
Rolf Krause, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Mats Larson, Umea University, Sweden
Dominik L. Michels, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
David Mora, University of Bio Bio, Chile
Daniele Prada, IMATI-CNR Pavia, Italy
Aurelio Spadotto, University of Montpellier, France
Giuseppe Vacca, University of Bari, Italy
Gang Wang, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

Industrial session

Umberto Perego, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Roberto Ramos, CEER Motors, Saudi Arabia
Marco Scarpelli, MOX - Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Blitz talks

Aparna Bansal, IIT Roorkee, India and KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Lijuan Fan, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Luca Galimberti, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Ajay Kumar, IIT Roorkee, India
Raman Kumar, University of Montpellier, France
Hodayfa Labbi, University of Montpellier, France
Huiteng Li, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Roberto Nuca, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Hamza Ruzayqat, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Harpal Singh, IIT Roorkee, India
Gioana Teora, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Giovanni Testa, KAUST, Saudi Arabia
Kaicheng Wang, KAUST, Saudi Arabia

International Scientific Committee

Paola F. Antonietti, MOX - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Lourenco Beirao da Veiga, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Susanne Brenner, Louisiana State University, USA
Daniele Di Pietro, University of Montpellier, France
Paul Houston, University of Birmingham, UK
Eun-Jae Park, Yonsei University, Korea
Alessandro Russo, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
N. Sukumar, University of California, Davis, USA
Marco Verani, MOX - Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Registration

KAUST faculty, researchers and students interested in attending POEMS 2026 are invited to register by October 31, 2026.

For inquiries or more information, please contact poems26@kaust.edu.sa

Previous editions

2024 - Paris, France
2022 - Milano, Italy
2019 - Marseille, France
2017 - Milano, Italy
2015 - Atlanta, USA
2012 - Milano, Italy

Polytopal Element Methods In Mathematics and Engineering (POEMS) 2026