First Annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop
The UCLA Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Center (http://picksc.physics.ucla.edu) and the IST Extreme Plasma Physics Team in Portugal (http://epp.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) are pleased to announce the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop. The location will alternate between UCLA and IST with the first workshop to be held at UCLA September 18-20. This meeting is open to all who have gained access to or are interested in gaining access to the OSIRIS source code and data analysis tools through an MoU between either UCLA or IST.
The goals of the workshop are:
- To introduce users to the new features and design of OSIRIS 4.0
- To allow users of OSIRIS to share experiences and discuss best practices
- To identify useful test and demonstration problems
- To discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer
- Identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out the necessary development
- If you are interested in attending this workshop or in getting access to OSIRIS please contact picksc.org@gmail.com.
OSIRIS is a state-of-the-art massively parallel relativistic particle-in-cell code that is now being used by roughly 100 users worldwide through more than 25 MoUs with UCLA or IST. OSIRIS results have been featured or included in 100’s of publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Over the past 20 years, the development of OSIRIS at UCLA has been partially supported by NSF, DOE, and LLNL, and at IST has been supported by the European Research Council, the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), and the European Space Agency.
PICKSC Workshop on Enabling Software Interoperability
The first PICKSC workshop was held at UCLA from Sept 22-24, 2014. The UCLA Particle-in-Cell (PIC) and Kinetic Simulation Software Center (PICKSC) hosted a workshop on enabling software interoperability within the PIC community. We invited the primary developers of about a dozen major PIC codes used in the study of Laser Plasma Interactions (LPI), as well as a few developers from other areas. The LPI community shares intellectual ideas about simulations effectively, but has rarely shared the software itself. There is no large community code. Almost all the developers we invited accepted, indicating a strong interest in this topic.
Postdoc Opportunities
PICKSC plans to hire 2 post-doctoral scholars over the next two years. We are interested in highly motivated candidates with expertise in all or some combination of kinetic simulation code development including new algorithms, software engineering, and/or developing algorithms for emerging architectures such as GPUs and Intel Phi. Expertise in plasma physics and particle-in-cell codes is desired but not required. Knowledge in programming in Fortran 2003 as well as in C, C++, CUDA, Java, and/or Python is highly desired.
Interested applicants should send a CV and statement of research interests to the PICKSC Director, Professor Warren Mori at mori@physics.ucla.edu.
Visiting Us
PICKSC also has funds to support the travel of visitors to the Center. If you are interested in visiting PICKSC to learn how to use the UPIC Framework, to improve the parallelization of your existing code, or to develop customized software, please contact the PICKSC Director, Professor Warren Mori at mori@physics.ucla.edu.