By Prof. David Ceperley, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The computer simulation of electrons, atoms, molecules, and their assemblies in soft and hard matter is foundational for many scientific disciplines and important commercially. Exascale computing is coming and our community should take part as are our colleagues in lattice gauge theory, climate modeling, cosmology, genomics and other disciplines. Continue reading…

By Prof. Mike Payne, University of Cambridge

In many countries there is increasing demand for measurable socio-economic impact from academic research. Perhaps the UK is furthest down this path with a significant fraction of the funding for Universities dependent on the ‘Impact’ (defined as impact outside of academia) of the research performed [1]. However much we might wish to ignore this trend, I am convinced that it will only increase, at least over the short to medium term. I also believe that, as a community, Continue reading…

By Prof. Giovanni Ciccotti, University of Rome La Sapienza

Numerical physics, i.e. numerical calculations serving the needs of traditional theoretical physics, exists at least since the times of Galileo, and probably long before. As Computer Simulation (started with solving problems in Statistical Mechanics), it exists only since the end of the second World War. It is based on the possibility of having computation speeds largely beyond human capabilities, even including speeds reachable by exploiting team work. Continue reading…