50 results for materials science

High Performance Computing (HPC) in computational science

1. Introduction

In all computational branches of scientific research (Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy …) programs and computers play a central role. The programs used can be either locally produced code or commercial software. The latter is often used as a black box application. However, even when using software as a black box tool, it is important to have some knowledge of the limitations and quirks of the software used. These are obtained in two ways: firstly by studying (and trying to understand) the underlying theories and algorithms used, and secondly by experience. One will often discover that knowing how a code should behave, and how it actually does, can be quite different things (and “just checking out the code to see how it works”, is often easier said than done, when such code contains tens of thousands of lines of generally undocumented code).

As with most projects in science, also computational scientists want to trace the borders of what is possible, and if possible look beyond. For computational problems, there are two main computational resources that play a role:(1) time and (2) memory. As the problem size grows, so do these resources. The latter is mainly remedied by using machines with more RAM-memory (or through storing intermediate data on disc, which tend to be tremendously slow), the former can be remedied through parallel usage of multiple CPU’s. This is where  supercomputer infrastructures come into play. Although a desktop machine can be useful for testing purposes, or small problems, a computational scientist also needs to be familiar with basic usage of parallel codes on a supercomputer. Actually, even modern day personal machines have a multi-core architecture (try to find a new computer anno 2014 with less than 4 cores) making parallelism also here an important concept.

2. Supercomputers

Most supercomputers run some version of a unix based OS, with all peculiarities involved. The extent of this installation can vary significantly, which will have its influence on the user experience (bare systems which only contain the most basic commands and programs installed may be considered efficient, but they tend to be rather annoying than useful. And no, vi is not something some-one in his right mind should use for text-editing;). Knowing how to work in the command-line-only environment of a supercomputer is, as such, a must for almost any computational scientist (of course there are exceptions).

In addition to the above, a computational scientist should also have a good knowledge of how efficient the code he/she uses is parallelized, meaning, he/she should do scaling tests. Having run VASP on several supercomputers (going from local clusters to national HPC facilities) over the years, I compiled useful information on the efficiency of the VASP code:

  1. CMS group cluster at University Twente (nl)
  2. The Aster, Teras and Huygens supercomputers at SARA (nl)
  3. The Stevin supercomputers at Ugent (be). On several of these machines I worked as pilot-user.
  4. The Flemish TIER-1 supercomputer (muk) located at Ugent (be). On this machine I was one of the pilot users, and I was granted calculation time for several projects over the years.

3. Code-development

For Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations I use the VASP code. This code is well known for its quality and performance. It should (and can), however, not be used purely as a black box tool. On the VASP Info page some links are given that will direct you to additional information and tutorials.
All results obtained with VASP, or any other general ab-initio code, is provided as text-data in one or more output files. And generally, there is no officially included software to visualize data such as the Density of State (DOS) or band structure results. For these and other purposes you are expected to either write your own programs or scripts, or use these written by third parties. Due to the complexity of the possible output it is not a trivial task to write a script or code that works for all possible settings of the ab-initio code. Over time, as I was writing such many such small programs I started adding them as modules and subroutines to a larger all-purpose program: HIVE (Humble Interface for VASP output Editing). The idea is to have the subroutines to be as generalized as possible, and as smart as possible (Ask as little input from the user as possible, if the information is present in the VASP output , get it there). Currently there are two big HIVE components:

3.1. HIVE-STM

This is a Windows program written in Delphi that allows the user to generate simulated STM images based on VASP calculations. This program is freely-available to those interested. More information can be found on this page.

3.2. HIVE-3.x (personal development version)

This is the multi-purpose fortran-95/2003 program containing several subroutines to handle VASP output data. At the moment of writing the code counts over 20.000 lines of code and more than 30 command-line options. These vary from simple operations on POSCAR files(making supercells and surfaces), over the calculation of the vibrational contributions from phonon calculations, and fitting of E(V) data to different equations of state, to a full Hirshfeld and Hirshfeld-I atoms-in-molecules population analysis.  Of course it also contains tools to extract DOS and band structure data from dedicated VASP calculations and present them in formats easily visualized with the xmgrace-software. Currently this software is not freely available. However, if you have access to the Ghent HPC facilities, you can use a beta-version of this program by simply loading the HIVE module.

3.2.bis. HIVE-4.x (personal development version)

This is a cleaned up version of HIVE 3.x which will become available for academic users. The program will be distributed as executable. More information can be found here.

 

3.3. Other Software

My interest in programming is not limited to solid state physics, or physics in general. Another subject which strongly draws my interest is fractals. Even though the algorithms have a limited size, they allow for the generation of very complex structures: e.g. fractal trees. In 2010 I spend some time writing a program for the generation of fractal trees and cities for a project of Dr. Yannick Joye.

Somewhat similar is my interest in the simulation of group “behavior” (note that from the physicists point of view a particle and a person are the same, as long as their behavior is described by rules that can be implemented). Again, from simple rules quite complex behavior can emerge, even though the overall behavior can still appear simple. In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Sylvia Wenmackers I have been working on a program to numerically calculate the chance for an agent to change its theory of the world to an inconsistent theory. (cf. Probability of inconsistency by theory updating under bounded confidence) The implementation of the algorithm allows us to find the exact analytic solution. However, the memory requirements and calculation time grows so fast with the problem size, that one quickly needs to move to a statistical approach, which is also implemented in our program.

Dec 22 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 13 & 14

NightCafe's response to the prompt: "Professor teaching quantum chemistry."

Weeks eleven and twelve gave some rest, needed for the last busy week of the semester: week 13. During this week, I have an extra cameo in the first year our materiomics program at UHasselt.

NightCafe's response to the prompt: "Professor teaching quantum chemistry."

NightCafe’s response to the prompt: “Professor teaching quantum chemistry.”

Within the Bachelor of chemistry, the courses introduction to quantum chemistry and quantum and computational chemistry draw to a close, leaving just some last loose to tie up. For the second bachelor students in chemistry, this meant diving into the purely mathematical framework describing the quantum mechanical angular momentum and discovering spin operators are an example, though they do not represent an actual rotating object. Many commutators were calculated and ladder operators were introduced. The third bachelor students in chemistry dove deeper in the quantum chemical modeling of simple molecules, both in theory as well as in computation using a new set of jupyter notebooks during an exercise session.

In the first master materiomics, I had gave the students a short introduction into high-throughput modeling and computational screening approaches during a lecture and exercise class in the course Materials design and synthesis. The students came into contact with materials project via the web-interface and the python API. For the course on Density Functional Theory there was a final guest response lecture, while in the course Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science a guest lecture on optimal control was provided. During the last response lecture, final questions were addressed.

With week 14 coming to a close, the first semester draws to an end for me. We added another 15h of classes, ~1h of video lecture, and 3h of guest lectures, putting our semester total at 133h of live lectures (excluding guest lectures, obviously). January and February brings the exams for the second quarter and first semester courses.

I wish the students the best of luck with their exams, and I happily look back at surviving this semester.

Dec 13 2023

How to verify the precision of density-functional-theory implementations via reproducible and universal workflows

“We hope our dataset will be a reference for the field for years to come,” says Giovanni Pizzi, leader of the Materials Software and Data Group at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, who led the study. (Image: Paul Scherrer Insitute / Giovanni Pizzi)
Authors: Emanuele Bosoni, Louis Beal, Marnik Bercx, Peter Blaha, Stefan Blügel, Jens Bröder, Martin Callsen, Stefaan Cottenier, Augustin Degomme, Vladimir Dikan, Kristjan Eimre, Espen Flage-Larsen, Marco Fornari, Alberto Garcia, Luigi Genovese, Matteo Giantomassi, Sebastiaan P. Huber, Henning Janssen, Georg Kastlunger, Matthias Krack, Georg Kresse, Thomas D. Kühne, Kurt Lejaeghere, Georg K. H. Madsen, Martijn Marsman, Nicola Marzari, Gregor Michalicek, Hossein Mirhosseini, Tiziano M. A. Müller, Guido Petretto, Chris J. Pickard, Samuel Poncé, Gian-Marco Rignanese, Oleg Rubel, Thomas Ruh, Michael Sluydts, Danny E.P. Vanpoucke, Sudarshan Vijay, Michael Wolloch, Daniel Wortmann, Aliaksandr V. Yakutovich, Jusong Yu, Austin Zadoks, Bonan Zhu, and Giovanni Pizzi
Journal: Nature Reviews Physics 6(1), 45-58 (2024)
doi: 10.1038/s42254-023-00655-3
IF(2021): 36.273
export: bibtex
pdf: <NatRevPhys>
<ArXiv:2305.17274>

 

“We hope our dataset will be a reference for the field for years to come,” says Giovanni Pizzi, leader of the Materials Software and Data Group at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, who led the study. (Image: Paul Scherrer Insitute / Giovanni Pizzi)
Graphical Abstract: “We hope our dataset will be a reference for the field for years to come,” says Giovanni Pizzi, leader of the Materials Software and Data Group at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, who led the study. (Image: Paul Scherrer Insitute / Giovanni Pizzi)

Abstract

Density-functional theory methods and codes adopting periodic boundary conditions are extensively used in condensed matter physics and materials science research. In 2016, their precision (how well properties computed with different codes agree among each other) was systematically assessed on elemental crystals: a first crucial step to evaluate the reliability of such computations. In this Expert Recommendation, we discuss recommendations for verification studies aiming at further testing precision and transferability of density-functional-theory computational approaches and codes. We illustrate such recommendations using a greatly expanded protocol covering the whole periodic table from Z = 1 to 96 and characterizing 10 prototypical cubic compounds for each element: four unaries and six oxides, spanning a wide range of coordination numbers and oxidation states. The primary outcome is a reference dataset of 960 equations of state cross-checked between two all-electron codes, then used to verify and improve nine pseudopotential-based approaches. Finally, we discuss the extent to which the current results for total energies can be reused for different goals.

Dec 10 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 11 & 12

SnV split vacancy defect in diamond.

After the exam period in weeks nine and ten, the eleventh and twelfth week of the academic year bring the second quarter of our materiomics program at UHasselt for the first master students. Although I’m not coordinating any courses in this quarter, I do have some teaching duties, including being involved in two of the hands-on projects.

As in the past 10 weeks, the bachelor students in chemistry had lectures for the courses introduction to quantum chemistry and quantum and computational chemistry. For the second bachelor this meant they finally came into contact with the H atom, the first and only system that can be exactly solved using pen and paper quantum chemistry (anything beyond can only be solved given additional approximations.) During the exercise class we investigated the concept of aromatic stabilization in more detail in addition to the usual exercises with simple Schrödinger  equations and wave functions. For the third bachelor, their travel into the world of computational chemistry continued, introducing post-Hartree-Fock methods with also include the missing correlation energy. This is the failure of Hartree-Fock theory, making it a nice framework, but of little practical use for any but the most trivial molecules (e.g. H2 for example already being out of scope). We also started looking into molecular systems, starting with simple diatomic molecules like H2+.

SnV split vacancy defect in diamond.

SnV split vacancy defect in diamond.

In the master materiomics, the course Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science hosted a guest lecture on Large Language Models, and their use in materials research as well as an exercise session during which the overarching ML study of the QM9 dataset was extended. During the course on  Density Functional Theory there was a second lab, this time on conceptual DFT. For the first master students, the hands-on project kept them busy. One group combining AI and experiments, and a second group combining DFT modeling of SnV0 defects in diamond with their actual lab growth. It was interesting to see the enthusiasm of the students. With only some mild debugging, I was able to get them up and running relatively smoothly on the HPC. I am also truly grateful to our experimental colleagues of the diamond growth group, who bravely set up these experiments and having backup plans for the backup plans.

At the end of week 12, we added another 12h of classes, ~1h of video lecture, ~2h of HPC support for the handson project and 6h of guest lectures, putting our semester total at 118h of live lectures. Upwards and onward to weeks 13 & 14.

Nov 12 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 8

After the complexities of week seven, week eight brings the last lecture week of the first quarter of the academic year. After this week, the students of our materiomics program at UHasselt will start studying for a first batch of exams. It also means with this week, their basic courses come to an end and they have all been brought up to speed and to a similar level, needed for the continuation of their study in the materiomics program.

In the bachelor program, the third bachelor chemistry students ended their detailed study of the He atom in the course quantum and computational chemistry with the investigation of its excited states. They learned about the splitting of in singlet and triplet states as well as Fermi-holes and heaps.

Vulcanoplot

Vulcano-plot of small data model quality of model instances in a large ensemble. Taken from our paper “Small Data Materials Design with Machine Learning: When the Average Model Knows Best“, J. Appl. Phys. 128, 054901 (2020)

The first mater materiomics students got their last lecture in the course Fundamentals of materials modeling, where we looked into some examples of application of machine learning in materials research. We also brought all levels of the course together and imagined how to link these in a multiscale project. Starting from the example of a windmill we discussed the application of computational materials modeling at different scales. For the course Properties of functional materials, the third and final presentation and discussion was held, now focusing on characterization methods. The second master students had response lectures for the courses on Density Functional Theory and Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science where the various topics of the self study were discussed (e.g., concepts of Neural Networks in case of the latter).

At the end of this week, we have added another 8h of live lectures, putting our semester total at 99h of live lectures. With the workload of the first master materiomics coming to an end, the following chronicles will be biweekly. Upwards and onward to week 9&10.

 

Oct 22 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 5

The corral is an artificial structure created from 48 iron atoms (the sharp peaks) on a copper surface. The wave patterns in this scanning tunneling microscope image are formed by copper electrons confined by the iron atoms. Don Eigler and colleagues created this structure in 1993 by using the tip of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to position iron atoms on a copper surface, creating an electron-trapping barrier. This was the first successful attempt at manipulating individual atoms and led to the development of new techniques for nanoscale construction. source: https://www.nisenet.org/catalog/scientific-image-quantum-corral-top-view

After week four, this fifth week of the academic year is most arguably the most intense and hectic week of teaching. With 22h of classes and still two classes that needed to be prepared from scratch (even including weekends time was running out), I’m tired but happy it is over. However, all the effort is worth it, and I was happy to hear the students of our materiomics program at UHasselt appreciate the effort put into creating their classes, during an evaluation meeting.

The corral is an artificial structure created from 48 iron atoms (the sharp peaks) on a copper surface. The wave patterns in this scanning tunneling microscope image are formed by copper electrons confined by the iron atoms. Don Eigler and colleagues created this structure in 1993 by using the tip of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to position iron atoms on a copper surface, creating an electron-trapping barrier. This was the first successful attempt at manipulating individual atoms and led to the development of new techniques for nanoscale construction.source: https://www.nisenet.org/catalog/scientific-image-quantum-corral-top-view

The corral is an artificial structure created from 48 iron atoms (the sharp peaks) on a copper surface. The wave patterns in this scanning tunneling microscope image are formed by copper electrons confined by the iron atoms. Don Eigler and colleagues created this structure in 1993 by using the tip of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to position iron atoms on a copper surface, creating an electron-trapping barrier. This was the first successful attempt at manipulating individual atoms and led to the development of new techniques for nanoscale construction.
source: https://www.nisenet.org/catalog/scientific-image-quantum-corral-top-view

For the second bachelor students in chemistry the introduction to quantum chemistry finally put them into contact with some “real” quantum mechanics when they were introduced into the world of potential barriers, steps, and wells. Though these are still abstract and toy-model in nature, they provide a first connection with reality, where they can be seen as crude approximations of the potential experienced by valence electrons near the surface, or STM experiments. They were also introduced to my favorite quantum system related to this course: the quantum corral. Without any effort it can be used in half a dozen situations with varying complexity to show and learn basic quantum mechanics. For the third bachelor chemistry students the course quantum and computational chemistry finally provided them the long promised first example of a non-trivial quantum chemical object: The Helium atom. With it’s two electrons, we break free of the H-atom(-like)  world. Using perturbation theory and Slater determinant wave functions, we made our first approximations of its energy. In addition, these students also had a seminar for their course Introductory lectures in preparation to the bachelor project (Kennismakingstraject m.b.t. stage en eindproject, in Dutch). During this lecture I gave a brief introduction and overview of the work I did in the past and the work we do in our research group QuATOMs, which although “quantum” is quite different of what the students experience during their courses on quantum chemistry.

In the materiomics program, the first master students continued their travels into the basics of force-fields during the lecture of the course Fundamentals of materials modelling. The exercise class of this week upped the ante by moving from ASE to LAMMPS for practical modeling of alkane chains, which was also the topic of their second lab session. In the course Properties of functional materials, we investigated the ab initio modelling of vibrations. During the exercise classes we investigated precalculated phonon spectra in the materials-project database, as well as calculated our own vibrational spectrum at the gamma-point of the first Brillouin zone. During the second master course Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science the central theme was GIGO (Garbage-In-Garbage-Out). How can we make sure our data is suitable and good enough for our models to return useful results. We therefore looked into data-preparation & cleaning, as well as  clustering methods.

At the end of this week, we have added another 22h of live lectures and ~1h of video lectures, putting our semester total at 74h of live lectures. Upwards and onward to week 6.

Oct 07 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 3

Infinite polymethylene glycol (POM) chain.

In week three of the academic year at the chemistry and materiomics programs of UHasselt, the students started to put their freshly gained new knowledge of weeks 1 and 2 into practice with a number of exercise classes.

For the second bachelor chemistry students, this meant performing their first calculations within the context of the course introduction to quantum chemistry. At this point this is still very mathematical (e.g., calculating commutators) and abstract (e.g., normalizing a wave function or calculating the probability of finding a particle, given a simple wave function), but this will change, and chemical/physical meaning will slowly be introduced into the mathematical formalism. For the third bachelor chemistry, the course quantum and computational chemistry continued with perturbation theory, and we started with the variational method as well. The latter was introduced through the example of the H atom, for which the exact variational ground state was recovered starting from a well chosen trial wave function.

Infinite polymethylene glycol (POM) chain.

Ball-and-stick representation of an infinite polymethylene glycol (POM) chain.

In the master materiomics, the first master course fundamentals of materials modelling, dove into the details underpinning DFT introducing concepts like pseudo-potentials, the frozen-core approximation, periodic boundary conditions etc. This knowledge was then put into practice during a second exercise session working on the supercomputer, as a last preparation for the practical lab exercise the following day. During this lab, the students used the supercomputer to calculate the Young modulus of two infinite linear polymers. An intense practical session which they all executed with great courage (remember 2 weeks ago they never heard of DFT, nor had they accessed a supercomputer). Their report for this practical will be part of their grade.

For the second master materiomics, the course focused on Density Functional Theory consisted of a discussion lecture, covering the topics the students studied during their self study assignments. In addition, I recorded two video lectures for the blended learning part of the course. For the course Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science self study topics were covered in such a discussion lecture as well. In addition, the QM9 data set was investigated during an exercise session, as preparation for further detailed study.

At the end of this week, we have added another 16h of live lectures and ~1h of video lectures, putting our semester total at 35h of live lectures. Upwards and onward to week 4.

Sep 24 2023

Materiomics Chronicles: week 1

The first week of the academic year at UHasselt has come to an end, while colleagues at UGent and KULeuven are still preparing for the start of their academic year next week. Good luck to all of you.

This week started full throttle for me, with classes for each of my six courses. After introductions in classes with new students (for me) in the second bachelor chemistry and first master materiomics, and a general overview in the different courses, we quickly dove into the subject at hand.

The second bachelor students (introduction to quantum chemistry) got a soft introduction into (some of) the historical events leading up to the birth of quantum mechanics such as the black body radiation, the atomic model and the nature of light. They encountered the duck-rabbit of particle-wave duality and awakened their basic math skills with the standing wave problem. For the third bachelor students, the course on quantum and computational chemistry started with a quick recap of the course introduction to quantum mechanics, making sure they are all again up to speed with concepts like braket-notation and commutator relations.

For the master materiomics it was also a busy week. We kicked of the 1st Ma course Fundamentals of materials modeling, which starts of calm and easy with a general picture of the role of computational research as third research paradigm. We discussed in which fields computational research can be found (flabbergasting students with an example in Theology: a collaboration between Sylvia Wenmackers & Helen De Cruz),  approximation vs idealization, examples of materials research at different scales, etc. As a homework assignment the students were introduced into the world of algorithms through the lecture of Hannah Fry (Should computers run the world). For the  2nd Ma, the courses on Density Functional Theory and Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science both started. The lecture of the former focused on the nuclear wave function and how we (don’t) deal with it in DFT, but still succeed in optimizing structures. During the lecture on AI we dove into the topics of regularization and learning curves, and extended on different types of ensemble models.

At the end of week 1, this brings me to a total of 12h of lectures. Upwards and onward to week 2.

Sep 17 2023

Countdown to Materiomics: Year 2

Last year, we started a new masters program at Hasselt University called “Materiomics“. It is aimed at bachelor students in chemistry and physics who want to become the materials researchers of the future: interdisciplinary team players with experimental, theoretical, and computational skills ready to build anything made of atoms. There are four specialization tracks developed: Health, Energy, Quantum and Circularity. But passionate students can also develop their own line of study (in consultation with the mentor). The start of this new program was also a new start for myself, as I started as a new tenure track professor materiomics (specialized in computational materials science) assigned to the chemistry department. As a result, I spend most of my time creating new courses for the new first year of the masters program. This year, the second year is launched for the first time, and also here I have a significant contribution. Together with the courses I’m teaching in the bachelor Chemistry program, my first semester will be packed. I’ll be teaching & coordinating 6 courses (25 ECTS), three of them new,  and contributing to others as well:

  1. Introduction to quantum chemistry (2nd Ba. Chemistry)
  2. Quantum and computational chemistry (3rd Ba. Chemistry, new)
  3. Fundamentals of materials modeling (1st Ma. Materiomics)
  4. Properties of functional materials (1st Ma. Materiomics)
  5. Density functional theory: the workhorse of first principles modelling of solids and molecules (2nd Ma. Materiomics, new)
  6. Machine learning and artificial intelligence in modern materials science (2nd Ma. Materiomics, new)

As you can see, the central theme in these courses will be to introduce students into the realm of computational research, often at the quantum mechanical/chemical level.

On top of that, one of the first generation materiomics students will be performing a master thesis in my group, studying the GeV-defect in diamond. Bachelor students in chemistry and physics may join as well later with computational bachelor projects, but that is beyond my personal event horizon of the end of the first semester.

In the following weeks, you will be able to find a weekly review of my endeavors in this regard, providing some insights into what the students in chemistry and the master materiomics (Physics & Chemistry) are learning at Hasselt University.

Jan 01 2021

Review of 2020

ACOS poster prize 2020

Happy New Year

2020 will forever be the year of viruses for me and a lot of us. At Maastricht University, the year started with a university wide cyber-attack with ransomware. After the computer-viruses came the human viruses, with COVID-19 shutting down one country after the other, and shutting down education systems as well.

Hopefully 2021 will be better behaved, though we know already some of the hurdles which will make life interesting the coming year. COVID-19 is far from over, and it will take at least a year to vaccinate everyone. Furthermore, as of the first of today, the United Kingdom is no longer a part of the EU, making travel inside Europe a little harder again.

But before we launch into these new and interesting times, lets look back at 2020 one last time, keeping up with  tradition. What have I done during the last year of academic merit.

1. Publications: +6 (and currently a handful in progress)

2. Completed refereeing tasks: +17

  • Applied Physics Letters
  • Journal of Physical Chemistry (2x)
  • Computational Materials Science (2x)
  • Materials Chemistry and Physics
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter (5x)
  • Diamond and Related Materials (6x)

3. Conferences & workshops in times of Corona: +3/+1 (Attended & Organised), >+4 internal 

ACOS poster prize 2020

ACOS poster prize 2020

With regard to conferences, 2020 was the year everyone came into contact with the concept of the online conference. Many conferences and events got canceled: such as TEDx@UHasselt (which will return in 2021)

  • ACOS 2020, Online, Oktober 28th, 2020 [poster presentation and video-pitch, 2nd poster prize]
  • RSC Chemical Science Symposium 2020, Online, September 29th-30th, 2020 [iposter presentation]
  • D-NL-HIT project meetings [oral presentations]
    • Virtual Partner Meeting, April 8th, 2020
    • Adhesives Pilot Branch meeting, October 7th, 2020
    • Virtual Partner Meeting, October 15th, 2020
    • UV-Curing Branch meeting, October 22nd, 2020
  • SBDD XXV, Hasselt University, Belgium, March 11th-13th, 2020 [(invited) oral presentation, poster presentation] …On Friday13th Belgium went into it’s first lock-down.
  • Pilot Branch meeting adhesives D-NL-HIT project, Maastricht University, Brighlands campus, February 26th, 2020 [Organised]

4. Science Communication & Social media:   

  • In February 2020, I finally caved and joined Twitter as @DelocalizedD .
  • Added several new repositories to my github account, with the most important ones being:
  • Started a YouTube channel (for the ACOS video pitch)

5. Current size of HIVE:

  • Continued work on a public version of HIVE at github: HIVE 4.x   (26K lines, 9 commands available)
  • 61K lines of program (code: 69 %)
  • ~100 files
  • 49 (command line) options

6. Hive-STM program:

And now, upward and onward, a new year, a fresh start.