Scientific Computing Community Heads to Atlanta
Before building a fusion reactor, designing a new aircraft, or forecasting tsunamis, scientists and engineers test their ideas using computer simulations. The people who create and use the software that powers these complex models are meeting in Atlanta this fall. Georgia Tech hosts the 2026 MFEM Community Workshop from September 22 to 25. This four-day event gathers experts to share best practices and improve open-source tools for computational physics, earth systems modeling, and energy research.
Registration for the workshop remains open through September 11. The event takes place at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, with an option for virtual attendance. Tzanio Kolev, a computational mathematician at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, noted the importance of the university setting. He sees the campus environment as a primary way to connect with students. These students represent the future colleagues who will improve MFEM for generations.
The Power Behind Modern Simulations
MFEM is an open-source software library used for solving equations in complex computational models. Researchers rely on it to build and test virtual designs on the world’s most powerful supercomputers before creating a single physical prototype. The framework demonstrates extreme efficiency. It recently powered a tsunami early-warning model on El Capitan, the world’s second-fastest supercomputer. That system completed a simulation in a fraction of a second, representing a speed 10 billion times faster than conventional algorithms.
Kolev was part of the team that earned the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize for the tsunami forecasting project. Beyond national labs, the software has found a home in the private sector. The AWS Center for Quantum Computing uses the library as the foundation for Palace. This specific tool runs 3D electromagnetic simulations to aid in the design of quantum computing hardware. The versatility of the software surprises even its original developers, who see new applications in every workshop cycle.
Collaboration Across Research Sectors
The upcoming workshop connects users and developers from national laboratories, academia, government bodies, and private industry. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority serves as a sponsor alongside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Georgia Tech. Nearly 20 scientists from Department of Energy laboratories plan to attend in person. These representatives come from Los Alamos, Princeton Plasma Physics, and the Naval Nuclear Laboratory.
Day one of the event features a free, hybrid tutorial. The High Performance Computing Innovation Center at Lawrence Livermore will lead this session, helping new users learn how to start with the software. Beyond technical instruction, the agenda includes a simulation and visualization contest where participants display work in an online gallery. Organizers will select a winner to highlight during the event proceedings.
Promoting Open-Source Innovation
Workshops like this show the necessity of open-source tools in modern scientific discovery. By keeping code freely available, researchers avoid the inefficiency of starting from scratch. They build on existing work, which accelerates innovation and makes high-level computing accessible to a broader community. This shared approach lowers barriers for entry-level researchers in the field.
Georgia Tech maintains a Center for Scientific Software Engineering and a dedicated Open-Source Program Office. These units work with the MFEM community to put tools into the hands of more researchers. Qi Tang, an organizer and assistant professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering, emphasizes the value of this direct contact. Hosting the workshop brings experts to campus, giving local faculty and students direct access to leaders in the computational field.