A committee of Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) alumni and friends has chosen Margaret Trautner to receive the 2026 Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science award. The annual prize goes to one or two recent fellowship alumni in recognition of their research accomplishments and outstanding leadership, integrity and character.
Howes, manager of the DOE Applied Mathematical Sciences Program until his death in 1999 at age 51, advocated for the fellowship and for computational science. Friends founded the prize, and the Krell Institute of Ames, Iowa, oversees the award and manages the fellowship.
Trautner, a 2020-2024 fellow, earned her Ph.D. in computer science from the California Institute of Technology. The award committee cited her work on operator learning theory and its application to multiscale constitutive modeling, providing mathematically rigorous frameworks for learning complex physical behavior from hierarchical models.
Trautner is a postdoctoral researcher in applied math at ETH Zürich. She will join the University of Texas at Austin in January 2027, splitting her time between the mathematics department and the Oden Institute, a hub for computational science and engineering research.
The Howes committee praised Trautner as “an innovative mathematician and computational scientist whose research portfolio demonstrates a refreshing balance of deep mathematical insight, computational sophistication and application to systems of realistic complexity.”
Trautner’s nominators emphasized her leadership and character as a match to her technical excellence, noting her role in identifying and facilitating opportunities for other aspiring scientists to excel. This included founding a Caltech peer-to-peer computing and math mentoring program and creating a course to help students entering the math department’s interdisciplinary graduate coursework.
Trautner also has made an impact in communities outside of academia – most notably as a former NCAA track athlete and accomplished distance runner, and as the facilitator of several Society for Applied Mathematics conference minisymposia.
Trautner’s “foundational contributions to operator learning and multiscale modeling, paired with her exceptional achievements as an endurance athlete and a champion of her technical peers, embody the technical brilliance, community leadership and exemplary character that Fred Howes championed in young scholars,” the award reviewers noted.
Trautner will receive an honorarium and engraved award, with the opportunity to present at the 2027 DOE CSGF Annual Program Review in Washington.