The goal of this project is to develop a new international research and graduate education program leveraging cyberinfrastructure investment to study complex phenomena in correlated materials. The project represents a partnership between researchers at the University of North Dakota (UND), the University of Cincinnati (UC), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S.; the University of Bremen, the Max Planck Institute of Solid State Research, the University of Wurzburg, and the University of Gottingen in Germany; and the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zurich in Switzerland.
The recent onset of petascale computing coupled with the development of new algorithms for complex systems allows the modeling of strongly correlated materials, such as high temperature cuprate superconductors, heavy fermion systems, and out of equilibrium nanoscale devices. These correlated materials form the basis of future high-tech devices and thus their proper theoretical understanding is paramount for technological progress. Highlights of the research to be funded by this award include simulations of strongly correlated systems using models parametrized by first principles calculations which include chemical details. These models will be solved with massively parallel many-body methods. A bottom-up modular approach for code development will be used. The resulting library of code modules will be broadly applicable and essential for the rapid construction of codes for student thesis projects.
Approximately 20 U.S. doctoral students from UND and UC will spend six to twelve months in Europe collaborating with partners above, over a period of five years. In addition to these extended research stays, students and faculty will collaborate virtually via video conferencing and emerging internet technologies and will participate in a 12-day summer workshop to be held at one of the partner institutions each year. Two postdoctoral researchers and the PI/coPI team will participate in the workshop and other collaborative activities as well. This international education and research partnership will work collaboratively to: 1) develop sustainable, multidisciplinary, international research opportunities for Ph.D. students, 2) capitalize on complementary research strengths to facilitate the development of petascale computational models which will lead to innovative discoveries in complex correlated systems, and 3) provide graduate students with a rich international research experience to increase their ability to compete in the global marketplace.
This project receives support from NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering and Division of Materials Research.
