To all in the Psi-k Community,

I’m writing with an important update regarding the Psi-k mailing list. As many of you will have noticed, posts to the mailing list have been suspended for the past few months. This was because a surge in demand created an unsustainable backlog of posts, so new posts were suspended to allow the backlog to clear.

Whilst this has addressed the symptom, the underlying issue is that the mailing list has grown beyond the capacity of the platform around which it was built (it now has around 10,000 members, and around 1M emails sent per month). 

At the most recent meeting of the Board of Trustees, the consensus was to not reopen the existing mailing list, but to move to a new platform as quickly as possible.

The new platform is Jiscmail. This is the UK’s national academic mailing list service. The mailing list address is[email protected]. I would like to thank members of the Psi-k Working Groups and Scientific Advisory Committee for beta-testing the new system over the past couple of weeks. I would also like to thank Mike Towler for all his work and dedication in setting up and maintaining the existing mailing list over many years.

Some features of the new mailing list include:

1. Only members may post to the list, but membership is open to anyone by clicking “subscribe” at the mailing list’s webpage https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psik-forum

2. To limit fake subscriptions, when you request membership of the list, you will receive a confirmation email that needs to be responded to before subscription is activated.

3. To limit inadvertent emails, when you post a message, you will receive an email asking you to confirm that you wish to send the message.

4. Messages are held until a moderator (one of the Trustees) releases it, so there will be a short delay between sending your message and it being disseminated to the list.

5. No attachments are permitted and messages with attachments will be automatically rejected. Instead, please host your attachment on an external server/platform and provide the link in your post.

6. Messages are archived publicly on the mailing list’s webpage.

7. There is a code of conduct that members must adhere to, which is available to view upon subscription.

The old mailing list will remain suspended for general posts from the community, but will continue to be used for important Psi-k announcements during a transition period, which will be until the Psi-k Conference at the end of August 2025.

In summary, if you wish to post and/or remain informed of announcements from the Psi-k community (job adverts, events, etc), then please join the new mailing list now via the link above!

Best wishes,

Arash Mostofi
Psi-k Chair

https://psi-k.net/general-announcements/chairs-announcement-new-psi-k-mailing-list

The call for outline stage funding proposals for Psi-k activities that will take place in 2025-26 is now open. Please see https://psi-k.net/workshop-funding/ for details.

The deadline for submission is Monday 22 July 2024. Proposed activities must take place between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026.

https://psi-k.net/general-announcements/call-outline-stage-funding-proposals-for-psi-k-act

To all in the Psi-k Community,

As previously announced, the next Psi-k Conference will take place in Lausanne on 25-28 August 2025. Registration will open around the end of 2024, so please save the date for now.

This is a worldwide community call for suggestions of thematic symposia (including their invited speakers and organisers) for the Conference.

As many of you know, Psi-k organises a general conference in its field every five years or so. The 2025 Conference will be the seventh in the series, following the very successful event already held in Lausanne (2022), and the earlier editions in San Sebastian (2015), Berlin (2010), and Schwäbisch Gmünd (2005, 2000, 1996). With 1200+ participants attending the last Conference, this makes it the largest event worldwide in first-principles simulations, theory, and applications.

The Conference will take place over 3.5 days, starting on the Monday afternoon, and will feature six plenary speakers. It will also include more than 120 invited and 240 contributed talks, organised into 30+ symposia in six parallel sessions. On average, symposia will last between two and three hours, and cover between two and four invited talks (30 min each), and between two and six contributed talks (15 min each).

To propose a symposium, you need to have a group of up to four organisers, as broad and as diverse as possible, identify a symposium theme (keeping in mind that about 20 symposia will be broadly dedicated to the core activities of the Psi-k working groups, https://psi-k.net/groups/) and suggest between two to four invited speakers. Organisers of selected symposia will also be in charge, in May 2025, of selecting contributed talks (two to six) from among all the abstracts submitted to the symposium by Psi-k 2025 participants.

The Psi-k 2025 Program Committee will evaluate in September 2024 all the submitted suggestions – the criteria will be:
1. scientific merit, timeliness, and interest of the topic
2. intellectual diversity and inclusiveness of the speakers
3. scientific merit and diversity of the organisers
4. alignment with the Psi-k mission statement (https://psi-k.net)

You can find the symposium suggestion form directly here: https://forms.gle/CdNCTghdM43SKjF9A
The deadline for suggestions is 5 July 2024.

We are very much looking forward to a successful Psi-k 2025, and to seeing you all in Lausanne.

Peter Haynes
(Psi-k 2025 Conference Chair)

Arash Mostofi
(Psi-k Chair of Trustees)

Dear all,

It is a great pleasure to invite you to the upcoming joint annual conference between CECAM and Psi-k:

2024 CECAM Psi-k research conference — Electronic-structure simulations for large-scale facilities: Opportunities, challenges, and roadmaps

Tue May 28 2pm (CEST) to Fri May 31 1pm (CEST), 2024

The conference will be live-streamed to anyone interested (no registration needed). The short link to the zoom is https://bit.ly/44NRytV. The QR code to access is attached.

For all details, program, and application for in-person participation:

https://www.cecam.org/workshop-details/electronic-structure-simulations-for-large-scale-facilities-opportunities-challenges-and-roadmaps-1207

The following topics will be covered: 

• Electrons and phonons; 
• magnetic spectroscopies; 
• X-ray spectroscopies; 
• light-matter interactions; 
• data and workflows.

Looking very much forward to this event,

Nicola Marzari (EPFL and PSI), Barbara Montanari (STFC), Leon Petit (Daresbury), Giovanni Pizzi (PSI), David Prendergast (Lawrence Berkeley), Gilberto Teobaldi (STFC) 

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As we move into a new year Psi-k is delighted to announce the election of a new Chair, Professor Arash Mostofi of Imperial College London. Professor Mostofi will follow on from previous Chair, Professor Peter Haynes, who has now come to the end of his term.

Arash Mostofi is Professor of Theory and Simulation of Materials in the Departments of Materials and Physics at Imperial College London. His research is dedicated to the development and application of first-principles modelling tools for the theory and simulation of materials. He is an original author and developer of the Wannier90 and ONETEP codes and his research interests include electronic structure software development, 2D materials, defects and interfaces, and perovskite and layered perovskite oxides.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Haynes for his leadership of Psi-k over the last three years and look forward to working with him as the Chair of the next Psi-k Conference that will be held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2025.