In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 Feb, the Fusion Group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center highlights the past women speakers at the Fusion HPC Workshop, held virtually each year since 2020. This workshop covers all computer applications using High Performance Computing (HPC) in the field of fusion research.
Julita Inca Chiroque, speaker at the 2020 and 2021 installments of the Fusion HPC Workshop and contributor of the photograph at the start of this post started her HPC journey in Peru and then worked in HPC in the USA and in the UK. On the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, she commented, “Together for science! Science is around us, we can all make a contribution.” The photo and the message combine perfectly in celebration of the day!
When asked about her current work, Helen Brooks, winner of a Popular Talk Award at the 2021 Fusion HPC Workshop, shared the following description: “I work in a fabulous team of people in the Computing Division at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. We’re writing code to run on supercomputers that will simulate one of the most challenging environments in the world, a magnetic-confinement fusion tokamak – where it can get hotter than the sun! We model many areas of physics, covering lengths of atoms to people. To help us, we use cutting-edge technology, like graphics processing units and artificial intelligence. Our simulations will help scientists and engineers to design, build and operate future fusion power plants like the UK’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), and accelerate the pathway to clean fusion energy.”
The message in common in both comments is the value of community and teamwork. In the field of Fusion HPC, where substantial resources are needed to build and operate supercomputers, community and teamwork are the key to progress. On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, let’s use that community and teamwork to promote gender equality in Fusion HPC. One way to participate is to take an interest in and cite the work of women researchers, some of whom are featured below!
Keynote talks of the Fusion HPC Workshop series
Materials simulations from first principles and Molecular Dynamics with application in the fusion R&D
First principles modelling of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and their control in magnetic fusion devices using HPC techniques
Role of HPC in Broader Approach Activities in Fusion
Invited and Contributed talks of the Fusion HPC Workshop series
* indicates a Popular Talk Award winner.
Emily Belli (General Atomics, UCSD, 2022): Multiscale Gyrokinetic Analysis in the Tokamak Pedestal
* Helen Brooks (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority 2021): Scalable Multi-physics for Fusion Reactors with AURORA
* María J. Caturla (University of Alicante, 2020): The role of high performance computing in predictive models for microstructure evolution of irradiated Fe and FeCr alloys
Maria Chrysanthou (Laboratory for Scientific Computing, University of Cambridge, 2022): Mathematical and computational assimilation for plasma boundary physics and integrated fusion reactor simulations
Julita Inca Chiroque (High Performance Computing Scientist): Preconditioners for Large Geometries (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 2020) and Scalable Solution of Linear Elasticity Equations in 3D (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, 2021)
Sita Sundar (SoVSAS Gautam Buddha University, 2021): Flow shear driven instability in relativistic EMHD regime
* Hanne Thienpondt (CIEMAT, 2021): Turbulent heat flux versus density gradient: an inter-machine study with the gyrokinetic code stella
The 1st and 2nd Fusion HPC workshop were organized under the auspices of the Spanish Supercomputing Network RES. The 3rd Fusion HPC Workshop was organized under the auspices of the FusionCAT project with reference number 001-P-001722 that has been 50% co-financed with € 1.960.963,66 by the European Fund for Regional Development of the European Union within the framework of the 2014-2020 ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia, with the support of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
