The Burke Celebration

Computational science and engineering – past, present and future

Last year our colleague Professor P G Burke FRS died.  Phil Burke had a seminal role in the development of computational science in the UK and to celebrate his many contributions we are organising a meeting at Daresbury Laboratory.  The main theme will be Phil’s personal contributions – to atomic and molecular physics; to UK supercomputing; to establishing the Collaborative Computational Projects (CCPs), the Theory and Computational Science Division here at Daresbury, support for the large experimental facilities and so on.  We’re aiming to celebrate not only Phil’s work but also his legacy in UK computational science and engineering today.

We had arranged to hold this Celebration in July 2020 – and then coronavirus struck.  The meeting will obviously have to be postponed, and at this point it is not clear when we will be able to reschedule it – possibly early in 2021.  But we wanted to let our community know that the Burke Celebration will happen, and to alert you to look out for further information that we will provide as soon as we can on this website.

Computational science has come a very long way from its beginnings in the 1970s to its present prominence across all of research. The Burke Celebration will bring together many of the pioneers who were colleagues and friends of Phil in the early days with today’s leaders and young researchers in the field.  Phil’s ideas on computational science as a collaborative activity have proved to be remarkably robust – this celebration of his work will be a timely opportunity to reflect on the past and present of the initiatives he did so much to nurture.

We have created a website for the celebration meeting and will continue to update this with information as well as confirmation of the new dates as soon as we have them. The website also contains a link to register your interest in the meeting, which will ensure that you receive an email update containing the new dates as they are released.

This celebration is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and CoSeC (Computational Science Centre for Research Communities) and the lead organiser is Prof Paul Durham (former President of CECAM Council).