Spotlight - Ian Madden, PhD '26, Computational & Mathematical Engineering
Most people think of Antarctica as a continent defined by its ice. I spend most of my time thinking about what lies beneath it.
The landscape underneath Antarctica's ice sheets is incredibly difficult to observe, but it's constantly changing. Those changes influence how the ice moves and, ultimately, how sea levels respond over thousands of years. It's a part of the story that's easy to overlook, which is one reason I find it so fascinating. I sometimes think of it as the underdog of Antarctic research; the ice naturally gets most of the attention, but the landscape beneath it has an important story to tell.
I didn't expect to end up studying hidden landscapes beneath Antarctic ice. As a kid, I loved taking apart drones, robots, and cars just to understand how they worked. That curiosity led me toward engineering, where I enjoyed solving problems and building technical skills. But over time I found myself drawn less to building technologies and more to understanding natural systems, especially ones that were still full of uncertainty.
During my undergraduate studies, I found that computational mathematics offered exactly that opportunity. Through numerical modeling and simulation, I found a way to study systems that were difficult to observe directly, and that combination of mathematics and scientific discovery immediately appealed to me. ICME allowed me to combine mathematics, computation, and Earth science in a way that matched my interests and gave me the flexibility to explore new questions as they emerged.
For me, those questions have changed over time. When I first arrived at Stanford, my research focused on coastal flood risk and nature-based approaches to protecting vulnerable communities. I was interested in how computational tools could help us better understand and prepare for coastal hazards. As I learned more about coastal systems, I became increasingly interested in the processes driving sea level rise itself. That curiosity eventually led me to Antarctica.
Today, my research combines numerical modeling and computational mathematics to better understand how the land beneath Antarctica evolves over long timescales and how those changes influence the ice sheet above it. Much of this landscape is hidden beneath kilometers of ice, so mathematical models become an essential way of exploring processes that are otherwise impossible to observe directly. I enjoy working at the intersection of mathematics and Earth science, where computation provides a window into a system we cannot easily observe.
One of the most rewarding parts of graduate school has also been discovering how much I enjoy working with students. Through a partnership with a community-based organization in the Bay Area, I helped lead an environmental education and data science program for high school students from under-resourced communities. Whether we were talking about mathematics, geoscience, or data, I enjoyed seeing students realize that these subjects were accessible to them. The experience reminded me how important it is to create opportunities for students who might not otherwise have access to them.
One thing I've appreciated at ICME is being surrounded by students working on completely different problems. I've learned as much from conversations with people in other fields as I have from my own research.That environment has made me much more comfortable exploring unfamiliar problems and taking intellectual risks, something that feels especially valuable as fields like artificial intelligence continue to reshape scientific research.
After graduating, I'll begin a postdoctoral position studying fracture networks in engineering and Earth materials, including how fractures form, how cracks propagate, and whether damaged materials can heal over time. Although the application is different from my current work, I'll continue using many of the computational and modeling tools I developed at ICME.
