Computational Materials Science Community
Below are some announcements and descriptions of programs and organizations related to computational materials science.
To include an announcement about a new initiative of interest to the CMS community, email the webmaster. You can also submit job listings and submit conference/workshop announcements.
Posted November 12, 2007 International Center for Materials Resarch (ICMR) at UC Santa Barbara announces its International Fellowship competition for the 2008 - 2009 academic year
ICMR International Fellowships support research visits to non-US laboratories for graduate students, postdocs and junior faculty affiliated with US Institutions. Typical durations are a few weeks - 3 months, with award amounts for travel and expenses of up to $5000; we anticipate that the applicant will continue to receive their regular salary support from their home institution. Conference travel is not supported. Applications are welcome at any time, but should be received by March 2008 for fullest consideration. Our funding structure prioritizes collaborations with countries that are not in Western Europe. For more information visit http://www.icmr.ucsb.edu
Posted October 22, 2007 Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship
This fellowship is available to support graduate students planning full-time study toward a PhD. The students research must incorporate the sophisticated use of high- performance computing. Applicants must be US citizens or permanent resident aliens; departments must certify that fellows will not be required to perform services (e.g., TA, grading, etc.) during the tenure of their fellowships.
The DOE CSGF program pays all tuition and required fees for up to 4 years of study at any US university, provides a $32,400 yearly stipend, matches university funds (up to $2500) to purchase a computer workstation for the fellow's exclusive use, and provides a yearly academic allowance of $1000 to the fellow for their professional development. Further details about the program are available at the program website and from the Program Coordinator, Ms. Rachel Huisman at csgf@krellinst.org.
Currently the program funds computational physics doctoral students doing research in astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, experimental and theoretical high energy physics, and plasma physics. Information about the current class of fellows, as well as program alumni, can be found at the program website listed above.
Posted October 6, 2007 NSF solicits multidisciplinary research proposals in computational thinking
NSF Program Solicitation: Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation seeks ambitious, transformative, multidisciplinary research proposals within or across the following three thematic areas:
- From Data to Knowledge: enhancing human cognition and generating new knowledge from a wealth of heterogeneous digital data;
- Understanding Complexity in Natural, Built, and Social Systems: deriving fundamental insights on systems comprising multiple interacting
elements; and - Building Virtual Organizations: enhancing discovery and innovation by bringing people and resources together across institutional, geographical and cultural boundaries.
Posted August 27, 2007 NSF publishes Five Myths about Girls and Science
"Five Myths about Girls and Science" gives resources for parents and teachers to help math and science students.
Posted December 7, 2006 Computational Physics of Materials course for Spring 2007 via NCSU-distance education
This course is designed for upper undergraduate and graduate level students in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and Materials Science with a strong interest in the modeling of the properties of materials with advanced quantum simulation techniques. The course will be designed with a strong focus on applications however a minimal background in quantum mechanics and solid state physics (or equivalent) is recommended.
Posted December 2, 2006 American Physical Society offers International Travel Grants
Grant is up to $2000 for travel and lodging expenses for international travel while visiting a collaborator. Program details
Posted November 27, 2006 NSF requests feedback on Cyberinfrastructure in Materials Research
Feedback is requested from the materials community on the report "From Cyberinfrastructure to Cyberdiscovery in Materials Science: Enhancing outcomes in materials research, education and outreach" (PDF, 2.2 MB). For details about the initiative, visit the workshop website.
Posted October 16, 2006 NSF Travel Grants to "Nano and Giga Challenges"
Nano and Giga Challenges 2007 is pleased to offer ten (10) competitive scholarships to U.S. graduate students to cover travel costs for attending and presenting at the conference next March:
Nano and Giga Challenges in Electronics and Photonics
From Atoms to Materials to Devices to System Architecture
Symposium and Spring School (Tutorial Lectures)
Phoenix, Arizona, March 12-16, 2007
http://ngc2007.asu.edu/
For more information, visit http://ngc2007.asu.edu/awards.shtml or contact: Jody I. Seeling, NGC 2007 Conference Manager, Arizona State University, Tel: (480) 965-9572
Posted October 12, 2006 Call for proposals on summer schools
This past year the International Center for Materials Research (UCSB) organized three two-week summer schools that took place at UCSB during the month of August. They were on Porous Materials, Advanced Thermostrucutral Materials and Catalysis (co-organized by PIRE-ECCI, UCSB). We had approximately 180 students and lecturers who participated in the programs. We are currently working on our schedule of schools for summer 2007. We will be coordinating two schools to take place at UCSB. We are seeking proposals from colleagues or groups of colleagues who are interested in organizing a summer school. Funding is available for 50 participants for each summer school, including 10 from UCSB. We can provide funding to facilitate the attendance of scientists from overseas, including developing countries. The lecturers will include colleagues from both UCSB and other institutions in the US and elsewhere. If you are interested in organizing an ICMR summer school, please submit a one-page proposal to Ms. Jennifer Ybarra by email (ybarra-->mrl.ucsb.edu) by November 1st.
Posted September 18, 2006 DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship
The Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) fellowship is available to support graduate students planning full-time study toward a PhD. The students research must incorporate the sophisticated use of high-performance computing. Applicants must be US citizens or permanent resident aliens. The DOE CSGF program pays all tuition and required fees for up to 4 years of study at any US university, provides a $31,200 yearly stipend, matches university funds (up to $2500) to purchase a computer workstation for the fellow's exclusive use, and provides a yearly academic allowance of $1000 to the fellow for their professional development. Further details about the program are available at the program website and from the Program Coordinator, Ms. Rachel Huisman at csgf --> krellinst.org. Application deadline: mid-January 2007.
Posted June 22, 2006 List of Electronic Structure Research Groups
ElectronicStructure.org maintains a list of different research groups. If your group isn't yet listed, and you would like to include a link to your group's webpage, email webmaster at ElectronicStructure.org.
Posted April 14, 2006 New Websites
We are releasing soon the two new websites for Quantum Espresso (an integrated suite of electronic-structure codes) and for Wannier (a tool to calculate maximally-localized Wannier functions):
Posted April 13, 2006 Introductory graduate class on atomistic modeling of materials
Gerbrand Ceder and Nicola Mazari have recently prepared an introductory graduate class on atomistic modeling of materials. This is now freely available on the web at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Materials-Science-and-Engineering/3-320Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm The class follows GNU GPL guidelines, and so all the material is available, copyright-free, for use and/or redistribution. The class includes video lectures, lectures slides, homework assignments and solutions, and covers basic principles of classical and electronic-structure modeling, with a specific focus on materials applications. It is generally suitable for students that have no prior experience in the field, and it is based on freely available or open-source software, such as GULP or Quantum-Espresso. Any feedback on the class will also be greatly appreciated - this is a work in progress that will be revised in future years.
Posted October 28, 2005 PARSEC: solving the Kohn-Sham equation
PARSEC is a computer code that solves the Kohn-Sham equations by expressing electron wave-functions directly in real space, without the use of explicit basis sets. It uses norm-conserving pseudopotentials (Troullier-Martins and other varieties). It is designed for ab initio quantum-mechanical calculations of the electronic structure of matter, within density-functional theory. (http://www.ices.utexas.edu/parsec/index.html)
Posted October 28, 2005 Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences: The University of Texas at Austin
The Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences: The University of Texas at Austin aims to promote innovations in new materials and to advance research related to information technology. Representative research areas within the institute will include the study of organic and plastic semiconductors, low-k dielectrics, dilute magnetic semiconductors and spintronic devices, carbon nanotubes, and nanowires. Research activities will also include examining multiscale phenomena and developing high performance algorithms targeted at simulating and modeling the properties of advanced materials. (www.ices.utexas.edu/ccm/itamit/)
Posted August 28, 2005 SDSC expands services, resources and capabilities provided to scientific researchers
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) Announces Data Allocations: SDSC is pleased to announce an expansion in services, resources and capabilities provided to scientific researchers. For nearly 20 years, SDSC has made available a wide range of computational resources. However, in recent years, the rate of data generation has increased such that data storage, management and analysis are now fundamental challenges encountered by scientists. To address these data-centric needs, SDSC is pleased to announce Data Central, a Web site to facilitate obtaining data storage and services. This new and unique program, the first of its kind, makes data allocations available to the US research community in order to support large community data collections and databases. We encourage researchers with the following needs to consider SDSC's Data Central as a solution.
- Additional data storage resources as you outgrow your own on-site resources
- An efficient way to make a data collection publicly accessible
- The ability to organize, manage and store massive amounts of data
- The ability to share data via a data grid or publish in a digital library
- Additional tightly coupled computational power for database queries or analysis
- File streaming capabilities
- Interactive access to large data collections or databases
Eligible researchers may request a data allocation from SDSC (with or without a compute allocation) that permits expanded access to SDSC's Data Central facilities for data collection (flat files or SRB ) and database hosting. These capabilities make it possible to share with colleagues specialized data collections or the large data sets that result from computations. It also enables participants an avenue to publish data for access by the broader scientific community. In order to support these endeavors, SDSC has made a number of data storage resources, tools and the associated expertise available to users. With storage facilities offering more than one Petabyte of online disk and six Petabytes of archival tape storage, SDSC currently hosts more than 50 publicly available data collections. (http://datacentral.sdsc.edu/)
