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The University of Southampton is hosting the UK’s first Next Generation Computational Modelling ‘Summer Academy’ this June to train PhD students in cutting-edge computer modelling and programming technologies, to address the most pressing scientific and engineering challenges of the 21st Century.

Computer simulations bridge the gap between theory and experiment, generating hypotheses, forecasts and predictions about real-world systems. This reduces the number of experiments that need to be carried out in the real world and the number of design prototypes that have to be built. In turn, this reduces cost, encourages innovation, optimises system design and enables the study of systems for which experimental work is infeasible – for example, due to prohibitive cost or the risk of endangering lives or the environment.

The Summer Academy, hosted by the University of Southampton’s EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Next Generation Computational Modelling (NGCM), is a one-week event for computational postgraduate training and research.

The Academy will combine research-focused presentations and discussion with a wide range of training workshops, open to postgraduate students who are working with computational modelling in some form.

Professional training providers, industry and educators, who have been involved in the development of tools for applied computational modelling, will deliver the workshops. The list of workshops includes:

• Introduction to Python, Version Control and Testing
• Explorative computing: IPython and the IPython Notebook (delivered by IPython team from Berkley, CA)
• Data Visualization and Analysis using VTK and Paraview (delivered by Kitware, France)
• Multi-Physics Simulations using Dolfin (delivered by Fenics core team, Simula, Norway)
• Handling Big Data: Introduction to Pandas (delivered by Pandas team, Nashville, TN, USA)
• Parallel Programming of GPUs using CUDA and PyCUDA (NVIDIA)
• Parallel Programming the INTEL Phi (Intel)
• Azure Cloud Computing for Science and Engineering (Microsoft)

Professor Hans Fangohr from the NGCM says: “The summer academy is a fantastic opportunity for research students to learn from leading-edge developments and code developers, and from each other. In schools, we are trying to bring programming and computing into the curriculum earlier, while at universities, undergraduate programming becomes increasingly more common. The aim of this Summer Academy is to support tomorrow’s research leaders at PhD study level and to offer this unique advanced training programme in computational modelling, delivered by the best people on the planet to push further science and engineering with the latest tools and techniques.”

The £10million CDT in NGCM was launched in November 2013 and is jointly funded by EPSRC, the University of Southampton, and partners from industry, government and academia. The NGCM brings together world-class simulation modelling research activities from across the University of Southampton and hosts a 4-year doctoral training programme that is the first of its kind in the UK.
The Academy takes place from 21-26 June 2015 at the University’s Boldrewood Campus and offers 50 subsidised places.

For more information and to register a place, please visit: http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk/summer-academy/