About Me

I am a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the UCLA Mathematics Department where I study physics-based simulations under the direction of my advisor Joseph Teran. In 2022, I won the Balbes Award for the top performing woman graduate student in the UCLA Mathematics Department. I was a Graduate Student Instructor for Applied Numerical Methods (Math 151A) at UCLA in 2022 and a Simulation Intern at Weta Digital in Summer 2021. My current hobbies include playing the piano, playing video games, knitting and crocheting, cooking, indoor cycling, and yoga.

CV

Research

Interests: applied and computational mathematics, computer graphics, numerical PDEs, physics-based simulation, finite element methods, material point methods.

Publications

Chen, Jingyu, Victoria Kala, Alan Marquez-Razon, Elias Gueidon, David AB Hyde, and Joseph Teran. “A momentum-conserving implicit material point method for surface tension with contact angles and spatial gradients.” ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 40, no. 4 (2021): 1-16. PDF Video

Kala, Victoria, Katherine Guo, Elizabeth Swantek, Alan Tong, Monique Chyba, Yuriy Mileyko, Chris Gray, Thomas Lee, and Alice Koniges. “Pandemics in Hawai’i: 1918 Influenza and COVID-19.” IARIA, 2020, 26-31.

Teaching

I am a Graduate Teaching Assistant for Math 33B and Math 151B for 2023 Winter. Resources for my students are available on bruinlearn.ucla.edu.

For resources to my previous courses, click here.

Contact

Email me at victoriakala (at) ucla.edu.