At the 2011 APS March Meeting in Dallas, DCOMP sponsored a Monday morning Invited Symposium "Great Advances in Computational Physics: Past History, Current Progress, Future Prospects." This was followed by a Focus Session "What is Computational Physics?" intended as a workshop on defining the modern field of computational physics. For example, what defines a computational physicist beyond being a physicist who uses a computer in research ? This focus session began with an invited talk by incoming DCOMP Chair Amy Bug (Swarthmore College) highlighting recent advances throughout the field of computational physics, and perspectives from the DOE Office of Science (Mark Pederson) and NSF (Darryl Hess) on current and future opportunities for computational discovery and design.
PDFs of some of these talks are provided in the following links:
Amy Bug - Computational Physics' Greatest Hits
Mark Pederson - Opportunities for Computational Discovery in Basic Energy Sciences
Daryl Hess - Enabling Computational Discovery and Design
The DCOMP sponsored sessions at the March Meeting were impressive. Thanks to all organizers for providing a broad, coherent picture of what computational physics has and can achieve.
ReplyDeleteI believe that most importantly these sessions were understandable to a wide variety of physicists, not just computational physicists. This practice of outreach to the broader audience, characteristic of APS meetings in days of yore but sadly lacking in much of what is presented today, is welcome. But it also is sorely needed in the area of computational physics, which is not fully appreciated by many physicists. These sessions helped to remedy that.