Congratulations to third year PGR Joe Pitfield, who has been awarded 250,000 CU (Computer Units) with a notional value of £100,000 from Materials Chemistry Consortium (MCC). Read below for Joe’s comments on this achievement:
The Hepplestone research group have a ritual when it comes to supercomputing. Biannually we draft proposals that are sent to the Materials Chemistry Consortium (MCC), outlining the work we hope to do if allocated resources on the ARCHER2 supercomputer (and its predecessor, the machine formerly known as ARCHER). This ritual was interrupted for me this time, as the new supercomputers arrival was heralded by the call for ambitious projects or “grand challenges” with which to demonstrate the capabilities of the new UK Supercomputer.
We pounced on this idea, submitting a grand challenge proposal. A cornerstone of my PhD research has been the development of a new software package, RAFFLE, which can generate many thousands of atomic geometries for the study of unknown and interesting phases of materials, especially at their interfaces. This high throughput approach to modelling atomic structure perfectly lends itself to consumption of the vast quantity of supercomputing resources provided by such a grant. This grant focuses on the interface between MgO and carbon-graphene.
Last week we heard that our proposal had been accepted, and we had been awarded 250,000 CU (Computer Units) with a notional value of £100,000. This has given us the opportunity to use 32 million processors to find new materials. This award must be used within 6 months, so I should probably sign off here and get to work!
Joe is supervised by Dr Steve Hepplestone.
