The 2016 UGM Dinner - at Seattle's Visually Stunning Aquarium on the Waterfront
The Materials Design, Inc. 2016 Annual User Group Meeting was held on October 4, 5, and 6 in the city's Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Seattle. Participants traveled to Seattle from all corners of the world for the training and scientific sessions, and discussed computational materials science, and atomistic and electronic simulation methods with friends and colleagues. Hannes Schweiger and Ray Shan led the training workshop at the meeting. The training sessions employed a new format with extended hands-on sessions and fewer presentations. This allowed in-depth analysis of a variety of calculation scenarios and an opportunity to apply these methods to any desired system. The new format and training materials were well received by participants and the focused hands-on sessions generated a number of interesting leads for future studies. The technical sessions provided many updates on the use of atomistic and electronic simulation in an industrial setting. Examples ranged from the exploration of battery materials, to the scale up of catalytic ammoxidation, to the analysis of crystallization behavior as a function of process scale, to the development of practical alloys to meet exacting corrosion and strength specifications, and the development of a bio-based asphalt binder, and a wide ranging update on alloy simulation. Benoit Minisini provided a delightful overview of the use of MedeA in teaching at an engineering school in France. Methodological talks included the latest developments from the VASP team by Martijn Marsmann, the simulation of electronic excitations by Dmitri Kilin, Philippe Sautet on structure activity relationships in heterogeneous catalysis, an update on forcefield simulation by Ray Shan, including discussion of the reactive forcefields ReaxFF and COMB3. Dave Rigby presented impressive results on property variation in crosslinked models as a function of dilution. An overview of new capabilities of MedeA by the development team and discussions about future directions rounded off this successful meeting. Talk materials will be placed on line for customers at the following location 2016 UGM Presentations, if you would like access please drop us a line at info@materialsdesign.com. The meeting dinner was held at Seattle's famous Aquarium (as the photograph above shows) on the water front and provided ample opportunity for technical discussions to be expanded and elaborated. UGM attendees additionally learned about marine otter rescue and the life cycles of jelly fish - the bioluminescent properties of the latter having relevance to the electronic excititation discussions earlier in the day. We would like to thank all those who made this year's meeting in Seattle possible. Particular thanks to all the simulators who attended and made the meeting successful and Anna McNair who expertly managed meeting logistics. We look forward to the 2017 meeting!