Summer Schools and Workshops
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The Materials Computation Center holds annual Summer Schools on current topics in computational materials science, which typically generate about 30 hours of lecture videos and 1,000 pages of lecture notes. Many of the summer school teaching materials and computer labs are available for download from the Schools' websites, listed below.
The Center also participates in workshops, symposia, and meetings by providing funding, through organizing and hosting, and by providing instruction and lecture materials. Currently, the MCC sponsors the yearly "Understanding Complexity Symposium" and the "Recent Developments in Electronic Structure Methods", a roaming workshop initiated by UIUC.
Summer Schools on Computational Materials Science
The Center maintains an index of downloadable summer school teaching materials and computer labs. Materials are also available at the School's websites, listed below.
- Quantum Monte Carlo Applications and Methods (2012)
- 2010 Tutorial on Electronic-Structure Calculations for Spintronic-related Materials (2010)
- 2010 Nano-Biophotonics Summer School (2010)
- 2009 Nano-Biophotonics Summer School Lectures (2009)
- 2009 Nano-Biophotonics Summer School (2009)
- Recent Developments in Electronic Structure Methods (2008)
- Quantum Monte Carlo from Minerals and Materials to Molecules (2007)
- Multiscale Theory, Simulation, and Reality at the Nano-Bio Interface (2007)
- Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulation Methods in Chemistry (2006)
- Hands-on introduction to Electronic Structure and Thermodynamics Calculations of Real Materials (2005)
- Introduction to Computational Nanotechnology (2004)
- Theoretical and Computational Biology (2003)
- Computational Approaches for Simulation of Electron Devices and MEMS (2002)
- Tools for multiple length and time scales (2001)
Annual Workshops
Recent Developments in Electronic Structure Methods
The annual Workshop on Recent Developments
in Electronic Structure Methods connects active participants in electronic structure theory from universities, colleges,
government labs, and industrial labs from around the world. The invited presentations
and contributed posters describe new methods for computing previously inaccessible
properties, breakthroughs in computational efficiency and accuracy, and novel applications
of these approaches to the study of molecules, liquids, and solids.
This workshop was started by David M.
Ceperley and Richard M. Martin (Physics, UIUC) in
1989. In 19 years, this workshop has been hosted
by 13 universities including:
- The Ohio State University
- Cornell University
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- University of California at Santa Barbara
- St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and
- North Carolina State University.
Each year, MCC provides seed money for the Electronic Structure Methods workshop. This funding enables wider local student participation and helps organizers gain additional support.
The MCC hosted the 2008 Recent Developments in Electronic Structure Methods workshop, June 18-20, 2008.
The Understanding Complex Systems Symposium
The Understanding Complex Systems Symposium (UCS) brings together researchers from many academic disciplines and industry to stimulate cross-disciplinary research activities involving complex systems. Originated by Alfred Hübler (Physics, UIUC) in 2001, this event has grown yearly. The training of the speakers is rather diverse: Physics and Material Science, Engineering, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Genetics and Biology, Math, Bioinformatics Physiology, Management, Medical Science, and Social Science.
Over four days, UCS 2005 had 300 researchers, including two Nobel Laureates, and 150 graduate students, who gave 122 talks. The speakers came from diverse backgrounds: 3-6 speakers are Hispanic, one plenary speaker is African-American, one plenary speaker is an American-Indian woman, and there were over a dozen other female speakers. International speakers came from Armenia, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
2010 World-University-Network (WUN) International Conference on Spintronic Materials and Technology
Held at the Beckman Institute at the the University of Illinois (June 21-23, 2010). The 3rd WUN International Conference on “Spintronic Materials and Technology” (WUN-SPIN10) is a follow-up of the 1st (WUN-SPIN07, York, UK 2007) and the 2nd (WUN-SPIN08, Nanjing & Hangzhou 2008) conferences. This conference is intended to be a forum for experts to discuss the new scientific and technological developments in the field of spintronics.
Local organizers: Jean-Pierre Leburton and Duane Johnson.
Other Workshops and NSF Meetings
With support from the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the MCC organizes meetings and reviews on behalf of the National Science Foundation. Through wide-scale participation, these events provide a unique, valuable snapshot of current research. The MCC also provides web support for other NSF-supported events.
2006 NSF Cyberinfrastructure in Materials Research Town Hall Meeting
August 3, 2006 Meeting Description: This meeting brought together leading researchers in Materials Science, including experts in the application of cyberinfrastructure to materials research. It also included some experts from other scientific domains who have pioneered the use of cyberinfrastructure in their research. These experts represented areas where we project that cyberinfrastructure issues will impact materials research in the upcoming years, such as the creation and exploitation of databases and the curation and analysis of very large datasets.
2005 NSF High Performance Computing Town Hall Meeting
October 17, 2005 Meeting Description: To break down barriers to communication, this meeting will occur in the cyber world and the real world. There will be a virtual forum for the group to help facilitate discussions leading to a report to NSF. The meeting will take place on October 17, 2005 and will be hosted by the Materials Computation Center, on the University of Illinois campus, with participation of access grid nodes across the country. The meeting will report progress on the main questions a bove and identify candidate benchmarks to measure the performance of high performance computers at the "production machine" level and those at the "petascale" level. A follow-up meeting, date to be determined, will crystallize the view of the community on this aspect of high performance computing.
2004 NSF Division of Materials Research ITR Computational Workshop
June 17-19, 2004 Meeting Description: The first two days of the workshop will highlight the exciting science supported by current NSF Information Technology Research grants managed by the Materials Theory program in the Division of Mater ials Research. The Thursday/Friday presentations will be of interest to PIs, postdocs, and students. The third day of the workshop will be devoted to discussing and identifying cyberinfrastructure needs to support the scientific aspirations (the "cyberscience") of the materials theory community. The Saturday presentations will be of interest pr imarily to the PIs, co-PIs, and postdocs; student attendance is not required. The workshop will end around 1pm.
2002 NSF Division of Materials Research ITR Computational Workshop
June 19-20, 2002 Meeting Description: The NSF-DMR, and Materials Theory in particular, has invested significant resources in computational materials research over the past decade. DMR and Materials Theory will conduct a review of research supporte d under various computational initiatives (HPCC/CARM, KDI, ITR), as well as larger projects such as Focussed Research Groups and NIRT's with a computational focus. As it is virtually impossible to visit all of the groups, the main goal is to have a concer ted review of all groups simulaneously, especially to encourage cross-talk among grantees; to provide an opportunity for young investigators to present their research; and, to provide the computational community with an overview of opportunities available in computational sciences at NSF, especially through ITR.