Author archive for Luis O. Silva — epp, TL, PI

Happy holidays to all our researchers, professionals, families, alumni, and friends, and a Happy 2020 with lots of personal and professional successes and great science! (and don´t forget to check the GoLP VR Lab with your new Oculus!)

In the most recent PRACE call for supercomputing time, Luis Silva and Jorge Vieira, GoLP/IPFN researchers and professors in the physics department, have received 36 million cpu-core hours for MareNostrum in Spain and 60 million cpu-core hours for Piz Daint in Switzerland, respectively. The award for Luis Silva is the second year renewal of the project PULSAR, aimed at understanding, from first principles, the magnetosphere of compact objects such as pulsars and black holes, and the award for Jorge Vieira is for the one year project OptiMom, with the goal of investigating how intense laser beams with exotic properties could enhance compact plasma accelerators and light sources. The estimated combined value of these awards exceeds 2 Million euros, and corresponds to the computing power of 11000 cores running continuously for one year.

Our team member Nitin S has successfully defended his PhD thesis on June 19, 2019. Many congratulations to Nitin (center) and all the best for his future life & sci endeavors In the picture, Nitin rejoices with his thesis committee (from left to right: Ricardo F, Jorge V, Nitin S, Bob Bingham and Tito Mendonça).

GoLP organised and hosted the visit of Gérard Mourou to Portugal that included talks at Pavilhão do Conhecimento, at IST, and at U.Porto, with dinner with GoLP PIs, the president of IPFN, and the president of DF, and the visit to one of the CPA labs of GoLP.

Luis OS, Ricardo F, Thomas G, and Marija V attended SPIE 2019 in Prague, from April 1st to April 3rd to deliver invited talks on extreme plasma physics, exascale computing, beam-beam physics and probing strong-field QED, and positron and gamma ray sources from intense laser-matter interactions.This was also an opportunity to strengthen our ongoing collaborations and discuss joint projects with several of the attendees.

The CERN Accelerator School on High Gradient Wakefield Accelerators was held 11-22 March 2019, in Sesimbra, Portugal, with more than 90 participants and lecturers. The CERN Accelerator Schools are organised by CERN and this time, GoLP was responsible for the local organisation. Our team members delivered several talks, and were responsible for the hands on workshop on plasma simulations. The president of IST delivered one of the keynote special lectures, on Artificial Intelligence.

And you don’t need to go to Belém to get them, because the best are right here! Following our tradition (see the “2014 Natas”, “2015 Natas”, “2016 Natas”, “2017 Natas”), the prizes for the winners of the image and video of 2018, the “natas” of visualization, were awarded to Giannandrea Inchingolo (left, also 2016 winner) and to Miguel Pardal (right). The term “Nata” was coined by one of the previous winners Paulo Alves: “Nata” is a tasty Portuguese pastry that everybody likes. It’s as enjoyable as having our simulations running nicely on a big supercomputer. It can also mean being at the top, at a high level, important.” Many congratulations to the 2018 winners! The images and videos have been posted on the team website here and will be posted over the next few weeks on GoLP’s Facebook page.

The IBM Prize was awarded January 16 2019 to Marija V in a ceremony at IST presided by the President of the Portuguese Republic. The official information from the Portuguese Presidency is here. Many congratulations to Marija on the prize and on the inspiring talk!

Marija V will be awarded the IBM Prize Jan 16 in a ceremony to be presided by the President of the Portuguese Republic at 5pm in Salão Nobre of IST. More information here.

We wish everyone, our friends, colleagues, and collaborators a great 2019! We look forward to another year of hard word, lots of fun, and exciting science!