Clarissa ASTUTO

Clarissa Astuto is a fixed-term Assistant Professor (RTD-A) at the University of Catania, in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Her research focuses on asymptotic-preserving numerical schemes, multiscale modeling, finite differences and finite element methods, with applications in biological network formation, sorption kinetics, and high-order numerical approximations for PDEs.

She earned her PhD in Mathematics and Computational Sciences from the University of Catania in 2021, under the supervision of Prof. Giovanni Russo and with the additional title of Doctor Europaeus, with a dissertation titled Multiscale Modeling and Numerics of Sorption Kinetics. During her PhD, she conducted research visits at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Rennes, where she worked on numerical methods for PDEs in complex domains and time-multiscale modeling of fluid-structure interactions.

Following her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) for three years (2021-2024) under the mentorship of  Prof. Daniele Boffi. Her work at KAUST contributed to the development of ghost-nodal finite element methods and efficient numerical solvers for elliptic-parabolic systems.

During her career, she has actively participated in international research collaborations and conferences such as ICIAM (Tokyo), HYP (Shanghai), and AfriComp (Cape Town), as well as delivering invited seminars at institutions such as the University of Oxford, the University of L’Aquila, and the KAUST SIAM Chapter.

She has also been invited to the following conferences:

1. 'Advances in Ordered Fluids and Alignment Phenomena: Modeling, Analysis, and Numerical Methods', 14-19/09/2026, Golferenzo, Oltrepò Pavese. 
2. 'Applied Partial Differential Equations: Modelling, Analysis and Numerics', 16-18/05/2026, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. 
3. Inaugurazione Anno Accademico 2025/2026 presso la prestigiosa Accademia dei Lincei
4. COUPLED Problems 25, 26-28/05/2025, Villasimius.
5. '3C Conference: Challenges in Computational methods for Complex environmental applications', 21-23/05/2025, Chambery.
6. 'Numerical Methods for Hyperbolic Balance Laws and Related Problems', 17-19/12/2024, Ferrara.
7. 'International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM)', 21-25/08/2023, Tokyo.
8. 'Multiscale analysis and methods for PDEs: fluids and active matter dynamics', 6-10/02/2023, Singapore. 

She co-organized a minisymposium entitled “Asymptotic-Preserving Schemes and Multiscale Approaches in Biology and Fluid Dynamics” at the upcoming ECCOMAS conference (07/2026, Munich), and another on biological network formation at the SIAM Conference on Dynamical Systems (05/2025, Denver). She also organized the workshop “ETNA: Efficient Time-stepping Numerical Approaches for PDEs Forward and Inverse Models with Applications” (10/2025, Catania).

She participated as Principal Investigator to the following application:

1. GNCS 2026 Grant, Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (INdAM), Italy, 2026.
2. ISCRA Class C Project, CINECA, 2024. Allocation of computational resources on G100 / Leonardo HPC systems.

Third Mission activities

• OrientaMat - Summer School -- Università degli Studi di Catania -- 02-04/09/2025
• Graduate seminar -- KAUST -- 12/10/2023
• AMS - Applied Mathematics School -- KAUST -- 08-12/08/2023 

Editorial activity

• Junior Editor "Open Mathematics"