18th Total Energy Workshop, ICTP, Trieste (Italy), 12-14 January 2017

The “Total Energy” Workshop is held traditionally in Trieste every two years, since 1987. It is devoted to recent advances in computational condensed matter physics and materials science, based on realistic calculations of the electronic structure of complex systems. It has become one of the most popular regular events of the international ab-initio electronic-structure community. The 2017 edition confirmed this tradition, with a large number of participants, lively discussions and, furthermore, with an impressive number of contributed posters. Overview, speakers list, program with the relevant material (Conference Book, abstracts, list of attendees, …) are available on the web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/7948/overview

Report

The Workshop involved 225 attendees, including Directors, Scientific Committee members, speakers, and selected participants.

Following the tradition of the previous meetings of the series, the Workshop has been structured in thematic sessions with oral presentations by invitation only. The aim was to gather speakers presenting current topics of research of broad interest as well as future research directions for the electronic structure community. The chairpersons introduced each session with a short overview (about 5 min) to set the subject and point out open problems.  The introductions were very useful, especially for those people working on other subjects. In addition, large space was devoted to discussion. This format has been greatly appreciated and contributed to create, most noteworthy, a lively atmosphere.

Selected contributions from participants have been solicited as posters. The large number of selected posters (140) has been a testament of the enthusiastic and active participation of the attendees. Consequently, two large poster sessions have been organized.

In Honor of Walter Kohn

The Workshop included one special Lecture and one entire session in honor of Walter Kohn, Continue reading SCIENTIFIC REPORT ON THE “18TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS AND MATERIALS SCIENCE: TOTAL ENERGY AND FORCE METHODS” →

Daresbury Laboratory was pleased to welcome 40 scientists to the “Questaal Hands-On Course” which took place over four days between May 16th and 19th.  The Questaal software suite features the first all-electron GW code and the first implementation of the quasiparticle-self-consistent GW method, which is significantly more accurate and reliable than conventional density-functional methods.  The focus of the course was to introduce these advanced methods to researchers already familiar with electronic structure calculations and to teach them the practical details needed to perform such calculations for materials and systems relevant to their individual research areas.

Read the full workshop report here.