Community
Monthly CIRC Symposia
Every third Friday of the month, the Center for Integrated Research Computing hosts a research symposium (known as the CIRC Symposium), where faculty, staff, and student researchers convene to learn about research projects utilizing the center’s resources, meet potential collaborators, and learn about new technologies and trends in research computing. This event is user-driven and features presentations by researchers using CIRC systems. CIRC Symposia are open to all members of the university community and a complimentary lunch is provided.
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) will host its next symposium on Friday, October 17th 11:30 am – 1 pm in Wegmans Hall 1400
This month’s featured speaker is Sobhit Singh from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Sobhit will highlight how his research group uses computation, theory, and experiment to design quantum materials for next-generation technologies.
Designing Quantum Materials for Next-Generation Technologies
Sobhit Singh, PhD
Department of Mechanical Engineering
The rapid discovery and design of new materials is transforming the way we think about energy, nanoelectronics, and quantum technologies. At the heart of this transformation lies our ability to understand how the behavior of electrons can give rise to extraordinary properties such as superconductivity, exotic magnetism, ferroelectricity, and even entirely new topological states of matter. In this talk, I will highlight how my research group uses advanced computational methods, simple theoretical models, and close collaborations with experiments to uncover and control these quantum phenomena. I will share examples ranging from two-dimensional van der Waals materials that can be stacked like Lego blocks to design new functionalities, to electrides where electrons themselves act as building blocks of the crystal. These discoveries not only deepen our understanding of fundamental science but also open pathways toward applications in faster computing, more efficient energy devices, and next-generation quantum technologies.
A Structural Similarity Based Data-Mining Algorithm for Modeling
Multi-Reactant Heterogeneous Catalysts
Jin Zeng
Department of Chemical Engineering
DFT simulations are powerful tools for studying heterogeneous catalyst systems. However, their high computational cost and large configuration space hinder their application in understanding multi-reactant catalysis on geometrically diverse surfaces. Our work introduces an innovative similarity algorithm that quantifies the structural differences between atomic configurations to address this challenge. The quantification effectively identifies structurally dissimilar configurations with minimal human intervention. Consequently, data mining the configurational phase-space through the similarity algorithm drastically reduces the number of DFT simulations required to identify the stable atomic models of interest.
Information about previous CIRC Symposia is available.
CIRC Summer School
Every summer, CIRC hosts a four-week training session on various operating systems, programming languages, computational programs and libraries, and data analytics tools for the research community. Known as the “CIRC Summer School,” these workshops are broken down into individual topics and feature small, interactive, classroom-based instruction sessions. Topics range from basic training in Linux to optimizing codes for parallel computing. The courses are designed for beginner and advanced users alike. Extra emphasis is placed on using the various available languages, libraries, etc., specifically on BlueHive.
CIRC Winter Boot Camp
Have you ever wanted to learn how to program or add a new programming language to your existing knowledge? Have you been looking for the right time to pick up a few essential technical computing skills to help with your research projects or course work? Well, now you have the opportunity during the CIRC Winter Boot Camp!
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) hosts a multi-week winter program to help students, postdocs, research staff, and faculty learn new programming languages and sharpen their computing and data analytics skills. The classes are designed for beginners and cover basic topics to give enough direction to move on to self-learning tutorials or other more advanced coursework.
Check again soon for an announcement about the next Winter Bootcamp!
CIRC Workshops
The Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) offers workshops every Spring and Fall that introduce users to the BlueHive computing environment and other computing resources that CIRC supports. The workshops include sessions in the morning targeted for new and beginning users, and afternoon sessions covering a few more in-depth topics and tools and applications that are available to the research community.
If you would like more information, please contact CIRC or follow the link below.
Annual CIRC Poster Session
The Center for Integrated Research Computing holds the Annual CIRC Poster Session at the end of each Spring semester. At this event, attendees discover the wide range of research that is enabled by computation and displayed to the University community. This event provides an informal venue to share computational and data analytics techniques and methodologies with colleagues from a wide variety of disciplines.
Check again later for an announcement about the next CIRC Poster Session!