Celebration of new and enhanced international research opportunities in Computational Science, Royal Geographical Society, London

14 November 2017

EPCC, the University of Edinburgh, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) recently ran a Best Use of ARCHER competition to facilitate early-career researchers, who are all either PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers, to build and develop their international network. ARCHER and EPSRC both recognise the importance of enabling young researchers to build their personal network to help build collaborations and skills.

The competition aimed to identify the best scientific use of ARCHER, the UK’s national supercomputing facility, within the arena of the engineering and physical sciences. The winners each received £3000 awards to build research collaborations between the UK and US and will be visiting research groups at US institutions to further their research portfolios.

The Awards were presented at an evening reception at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 28th September in a ‘Celebration of new and enhanced international research opportunities in Computational Science’, providing an opportunity for the winners to network with those in the ARCHER community and with research software engineers from across the UK. 


Winning entries

The winners were:

  • Tai Duc Bui, Department of Chemical Engineering at University College London
  • Nguyen Anh Koah Doan, Zhi Chen & Ivan Langella, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge
  • Alex Ganose, Department of Chemistry at University College London
  • Chiara Gattinoni, Tribiology group, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London and Materials Theory at ETH Zürich
  • Thomas Mellan, Thomas Young Centre for the Theory and Simulation of Materials at Imperial College London
  • Michael Ruggiero, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge
  • Nathan Sime, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge
  • Gabriele Sosso, Martin Fitzner & Philipp Pedevilla Department of Physics & Astronomy at University College London
  • Guido von Rudorff, Department of Physics & Astronomy at University College London
  • Zhong-Nan Wang, Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

The entries covered a broad range of topics, including:

  • Helping to prevent pipeline blockages in the oil and gas industry
  • Improving the performance of solar [power] by studying photovoltaic panel materials
  • Simulating combustion engines in order to improve efficiency and to reduce environmental impact.

The winners will come together once again in 2018 to share with the supercomputing community the impact of the award they received.

The competition was run by ARCHER on behalf of EPSRC which funds the supercomputer in partnership with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). More information can be found at: http://archer.ac.uk/community/earlycareer/earlycareerindex.php