On 1 March 2024, Mr. M.Sc. Poria gave his doctoral lecture on the topic "High-Performance Computing Solution Strategies for the Finite Cell Method". Afterwards, he mastered his defense excellently and was able to complete his PhD "with distinction". The team of the research group "High Performance Computing" congratulates him on his great achievement.

On 1 March 2024, M.Sc. Poria Saberi will give his doctoral lecture on the topic "High-Performance Computing Solution Strategies for the Finite Cell Method".

Further information and an abstract can be found in the PDF.

On Friday, 1 March 2024, Prof. Rank (TU Munich) will give a guest lecture entitled "Non-Destructive Testing Using the Finite Cell Method".

Please click here to open the pdf and get a detailed abstract of the lecture.

All interested parties are cordially invited to attend the lecture.

Poria Saberi, Günther Meschke and Andreas Vogel were awarded with the "Best Paper Award" at 29th International European Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing (Euro-Par 2023) in Limassol, Cyprus. Their paper "An efficient parallel adaptive GMG solver for large-scale Stokes problems" presents a geometric multigrid solver for the Stokes equations and discusses its performance and parallel scalability for large-scale problems. 
Poria Saberi is conducting his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Prof. Dr. Günther Meschke in the area of high-performance computing.

The Euro-Par 2023 Proceedings are freely available for a limited time on Springer website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-39698-4.

Euro-Par is the prime European conference covering all aspects of parallel and distributed processing, ranging from theory to practice, from small to the largest parallel and distributed systems and infrastructures, from fundamental computational problems to full-fledged applications, from architecture, compiler, language and interface design and implementation, to tools, support infrastructures, and application performance aspects.

On July 28, 2023, Mr. M.Sc. Sahir Butt gave his doctoral lecture on the topic "Computational Fracture and Fragmentation Modeling using Peridynamics: Application to Mechanized Excavation in Hard Rock". Afterwards, he mastered his defense excellently and was able to complete his PhD "with distinction". The team of the research group "High Performance Computing" congratulates him on his great achievement.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel was appointed University Professor by the Rector of the RUB Prof. Dr. Axel Schölmerich on Tuesday, 21.09.2021. Effective 01.10.2021 he will hold the professorship for High Performance Computing.

We congratulate him warmly and look forward to further years of successful cooperation.

from left: Rector Prof. Dr. Axel Schölmerich, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Dean Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Höffer at the ceremony.

The hacker attack in May 2020 most impressively showed that topics such as IT strategy, IT structures and IT governance are of enormous importance for all employees of the RUB. In its meeting on November 17th 2020, the Rectorate therefore appointed Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel (AG High Performance Computing in the Engineering Sciences) as the RUB's Chief Information Officer (CIO).

From 1st January 2021 his responsibilities include the monitoring of digitization strategies in close cooperation with the central operating units, the administration, the faculties and other scientific institutions as well as the RUB user representative group; supervision of university-wide IT projects; continuation of the digital transformation and evaluation of modern technologies as a driving force for new trends; budget and resource planning for IT at the RUB as well as regular reports to the rectorate and, if necessary, other committees.

With the presentation of the certificate by Dean Prof. Dr.-Ing. Höffer the junior professorship of Jun. Prof. Dr. Vogel was extended yesterday. He was also assigned the status of a civil servant with limited tenure.

We are pleased that Mr. Vogel continues to be a member of the faculty and wish him the successful implementation of his research projects!

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and B. Sc. Jose Pinzon Escobar, members of the working group High Performance Computing in the Engineering Sciences, are delighted to win a prize of 5,000 euros for their eLearning concept "CodeRunner for student software development for high-performance computers". The RUB's eLearning team honored innovative eLearning solutions in the 23rd round of the competition according to the motto "Hitting the Bull's eye with eLearning".

In order to reliably answer engineering and physical questions, massive computing power is required in some cases, so that appropriate simulations and evaluations can be carried out. In his courses, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel provides students with the necessary overall understanding for the use of high-performance computers (computer clusters), the properties of suitable mathematical solution algorithms and the implementation of programming techniques. Along with B.Sc. Jose Pinzon Escobar, the question "How can we learn programming techniques even better?" arose in January 2019, which led to participation in the competition.

The presence exercises of Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel are aimed particularly at students of the international Master's program "Computational Engineering". The programming knowledge of the students varies, which is caused by the different backgrounds of their bachelor studies. In most cases, however, the necessary time is lacking to deal in detail with the programming difficulties of individual students. So far, the solutions have been presented by the lecturer and made available to the students in order to continuing to work on this level of knowledge. Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel wants to improve the learning processes immediately, because he is sure that: "You have to practice programming practically in order to achieve a better learning effect". Together with the students and Jose Pinzon Escobar, he therefore initiated an open discussion round in January. During the search for solutions, the project idea for eLearning methods finally emerged.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar subsequently developed the award-winning eLearning concept, which enables students to learn at their own learning pace. The implementation takes place in the form of weekly programming exercises that build on each other and deepen the learning process. Small code snippets are gradually programmed in question-answer mode. At the same time, their correctness is tested automatically. After checking the partial step, only the next partial task can be solved and the correctness of the implementation can be tested. Accompanying comprehension questions (multiple choice, answer input) support the students to understand the characteristics and essential aspects of the tasks better. By achieving the learning goal in various levels, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar create both a sense of achievement and a high motivation to independently solve programming tasks (gamification). Thus, students develop a fully functioning software program at the end of the course, which can be run on the largest parallel computers. While searching for supporters, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Andreas Vogel and Jose Pinzon Escobar came across the 5x5000 eLearning competition and were able to convince the student jury of their idea. For the introduction of the new eLearning methods, the use of a plug-in for Moodle is already planned in cooperation with RUB IT.SERVICES. After a test phase, further development will take place during the semester.

In the course of the RUBeL competition, the eLearning team supports innovative eLearning projects at the RUB. The planning and implementation is in the hands of students. Further information on the competition can be found here.

We congratulate the award winners and wish them continued success in implementing the project!