Just as in the past few years, a free and open online course about Computational Materials Physics is available from Ghent University. The course starts next week, and this announcement is therefore rather late, because we’re working hard to get a refurbished website in place.

You can take this course in sync with local students and benefit in this way from our weekly feedback webinars (Sep 26 - Dec 19), or you can take it self-paced and/or only partly, at any time of the year.

The target audience is people with no prior knowledge about DFT, who want to have a hands-on introduction. At the end of the course, students will be able to read papers that report about DFT results, and they will be able to make basic calculations with an open source DFT code. A general science education at bachelor level is sufficient as background knowledge. The approach is conceptual and hands-on, not mathematical.

The course follows a weekly pace, with the following structure:

* Watching a set of prerecorded lecture videos about the topic of the week
* Solving tasks related to these videos – in most cases, there is immediate automated or peer feedback after submitting the task
* Questions about the lectures and tasks can be submitted at any time, and students can answer the questions of others
* Unresolved issues will be dealt with in a weekly feedback webinar that is livestreamed (Sep-Dec). A video of these webinars remains available for those who cannot watch them live.

As an optional part, students can work in teams on a project. During the final webinar, the teams present their work.

The (new) course website is at http://beta.compmatphys.org/. 

Students from Flemish universities can take this course as a regular course in their program, for 6 ECTS points. For students not affiliated to a Flemish university, taking part in this course happens on an voluntary basis – unless your university agrees to give you credit for it (feel free to contact me if I can help about that). In any case, an inofficial letter confirming one's participation can be provided after completion.

Please pass on this information to students for whom this course can be relevant (those students will often not yet be subscribing the psi-k mailing list...)

All exercises are described for Quantum Espresso. The format is such, however, that similar instructions can be seamlessly added for other DFT codes. The goal toward which this course should evolve is a code-independent course on the basics of DFT and materials physics, with practical exercises described for any of the mainstream DFT codes on the market. If you are an expert user of a DFT code and willing to contribute, feel free to contact me to discuss.

Experienced DFT users/teachers are welcome to audit the course. We’re open to suggestions and corrections, as well as to collaboration.

The largest change this year, is the move to a new web site with a different access philosophy. All course material (video and text) is now fully open, without the need for any registration. The material is organized in a more modular way, which makes it easier to pick only the cherries you like/need most. The scientific content itself has not significantly changed.

It is still possible to register at the new site. Registration gives you additional access to discussion fora, it makes it possible to submit the tasks that correspond to each module, and you can submit questions that will be addressed during the weekly feedback webinars. If you register and participate in all modules, you get an inofficial certificate of participation.

The old website at http://www.compmatphys.org is still operational, to allow people who started studying there to complete their work. In a few months, it will become obsolete. 

Stefaan Cottenier