ENGAGE: Enabling the next generation of computational physicists and engineers

Advanced, high-performance computing and adapted, smart approaches to data analysis are now critical strategic enablers for opening horizons for scientific discovery and innovative engineering applications, enhancing European competitiveness and supporting the digitalization of society. Whether discovering new Physics or engineering new materials, advanced computing technologies allow us to exploit unprecedented large-scale simulations and complex data to gain deep insights into new phenomena and structures and provide usable results having widespread impact.

The rapid development of high-performance computing (HPC), data science approaches, such as machine and deep learning, and the emerging field of quantum computing, have the power to transform the way research is carried out across disciplines. Properly exploited, they can offer immense, possibly revolutionary opportunities for scientific discovery in a wide range of research areas such as physics, engineering, and material and biological sciences and can potentially deliver enormous societal impact. However, to effectively take advantage of these technologies, a new generation of scientists and engineers is required that is able to understand computer technologies, modelling and algorithms and, importantly, how to apply them to solve challenges in science and engineering.

The project “Enabling the next generation of computational physicists and engineers” (ENGAGE) is an interdisciplinary, intersectoral and multi-institutional project offering quality training to a total of 20 doctoral students in the fields of Computational High Energy Physics, Multiscale Systems and Synchrotron Light Applications. It aims to develop students’ competencies in High-Performance Computing, in methodologies at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science approaches and Quantum Computing.