Pr Roland Glowinski, former director of CERFACS, dies at 84
28 January 2022
We are very sad to announce that Roland Glowinski has died on January 26th. Pr Glowinski was CERFACS director from 1992 to 1995 and has strongly contributed to the evolution of the laboratory. He was a professor émérite at université Pierre et Marie Curie, part time professor at City U, Hong Kong, professor at University of Houston, member of the french Academy of Sciences.
EDF P. Caseau prize awarded to CERFACS PhD on combustion instabilities: C. Laurent
27 January 2022
Charlélie Laurent has received the 2021 EDF Paul Caseau prize for his work on combustion instabilities in rocket engines. This prestigious prize is awarded by the Fondation del Duca and supported by EDF, the Institute of France, the Academy of Sciences. C. Laurent graduated from Ecole Normale de Cachan and is now a post doctoral student at Stanford University.
Final movie of the Large Eddy Simulation of a full engine and links of the publications.
26 January 2022
Within the PRACE project FULLEST (First fUlL engine computation with Large Eddy SimulaTion), a joint collaboration between CERFACS, SAFRAN and AKIRA technologies, two joint papers got recently published in open access in the Journal of Global Power Propulsion Society. We acknowledge PRACE for awarding us access to Joliot-Curie (Genci) hosted at CEA/TGCC, FRANCE, Safran Tech and DGAC fundings within the project ATOM, along with the invaluable technical support at CERFACS: Dr. G. Staffelbach, Dr. F. Duchaine, Dr. L. Gicquel, Dr. N. Odier and M. B. Martin. Akira Tech: Dr. T. Quirante and N. Vieira-Nobre. @Safran Helicopter Engines: Dr. S. Richard , Dr. N. Buffaz and Dr G. Exilard. It also benefited from developments done in projects EXCELLERAT (H2020 823691) and EPEEC (H2020 801051).
Video presentation of the NextSim EuroHPC project
14 December 2021
The video presentation of the NextSim project has just been released : CERFACS is involved in the NextSim project (). The primary objective is to increase the capabilities of Computational Fluid Dynamics tools on extreme-scale parallel computing platforms for aeronautical design. This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement N° 956104. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Spain, France, Germany. This project has received funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under grant agreement N° ANR-20-EHPC-0002-02. For more information, please visit
Thierry Poinsot officially entered the French Academy of Sciences
8 November 2021
Thierry Poinsot officially entered the French Academy of Sciences on October 12. See presentation here :
The AVBP code from CERFACS at the heart of for PRACE projects from the 23rd call
30 September 2021
Cerfacs is involved in three PRACE projects of the 23rd call for which hour allocation runs from 01/10/2021 to 30/09/2022. Researchers from ECL/LMFA UMR5509 (Ecole Centrale de Lyon) and IMFT (UMR 5502) laboratories have earned projects entirely based on the use of the LES solver developed by Cerfacs AVBP and involve the support of experts from the CFD and COOP teams underling the importance and effectiveness of collaborations between French labs and Cerfacs. Alexis Giauque from ECL/LMFA UMR5509 (Ecole Centrale de Lyon) has obtained not only one but two PRACE projects! The first project LESFAN (RA0101, 30 000 000 CPU hours on Irene/Rome TGCC) is based on the use of AVBP in the turbomachinery version to study the generation of noise by a fan of a real airplane engine. The second, PRACE-EDGES (RA0101, 40 000 000 CPU hours on Irene/Rome TGCC) focuses on LES modeling of dens gas in complex geometries. To do so, the LMFA Team has developed advanced thermodynamic closures in AVBP allowing the direct simulation of such flows. Laurent Selle from IMFT (UMR 5502) has received CPU hours for the GASTON project (RA0061, 30 000 000 CPU hours on Marenostrum BSC) which aims to study the structure of hydrogen flames in porous materials. For this, IMFT and Cerfacs will perform coupled simulations considering the reactive flow with AVBP as well as the conduction in the porous medium with AVTP which is known to play an central role in the flame stabilization process. Carlos Perez Arroyo from IMFT (UMR 5502) received 16 Mh CPU hours on Joliot-Curie Skylake partition to support his project WONDER.
watch the online contest ”my thesis in 180 sec” organized for Marie Curie actions
24 September 2021
Next Thursday, Sept 30th the #FallingWallsLab #MSCA research presentation competition will take place, . This is a competition in which 15 researchers compete to deliver the best presentation of their research topic in the format "my thesis in 180 seconds" . Javier Crespo-Anadon, 3rd year PhD student in the CFD team is one of the 15 finalists and he will present this thesis topic: ignition in spinning combustion engines for a reduction in CO2 emissions! You can watch it online on the above website on Sept 30th at 3pm. I encourage you to go to the website and register! You'll be able to listen to the other participants' pitches and vote for your favorite. Come and see for yourself what kind of research the EU funds!
NextSim General Assembly and TC meeting
16 September 2021
The General Assembly and TC Meeting took place on 15-16 September 2021. CERFACS is involved in the NextSim project (). The primary objective is to increase the capabilities of Computational Fluid Dynamics tools on extreme-scale parallel computing platforms for aeronautical design. This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement N° 956104. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Spain, France, Germany. This project has received funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under grant agreement N° ANR-20-EHPC-0002-02. For more information, please visit
Sophie Valcke from Cerfacs co-authored a new book on atmosphere-ocean modelling
18 August 2021
new book "Atmosphere-Ocean Modelling - Couling and Couplers” by Prof. Carlos R Mechoso, Prof. Soon-Il An and Dr Sophie Valcke has just been published by World Scientific. The present book fills a void in the current literature by presenting a basic and yet rigorous treatment of how the models of the atmosphere and the ocean are put together into a coupled system. Details are available at Abstract: Coupled atmosphere-ocean models are at the core of numerical climate models. There is an extraordinarily broad class of coupled atmosphere-ocean models ranging from sets of equations that can be solved analytically to highly detailed representations of Nature requiring the most advanced computers for execution. The models are applied to subjects including the conceptual understanding of Earth’s climate, predictions that support human activities in a variable climate, and projections aimed to prepare society for climate change. The present book fills a void in the current literature by presenting a basic and yet rigorous treatment of how the models of the atmosphere and the ocean are put together into a coupled system. The text of the book is divided into chapters organized according to complexity of the components that are coupled. Two full chapters are dedicated to current efforts on the development of generalist couplers and coupling methodologies all over the world
CERFACS to participate to the pitch competition “Falling walls lab”
6 August 2021
Javier Crespo-Anadon, a PhD candidate from EU Marie-Curie project Annulight, has been selected to participate in the research pitch competition "Falling walls lab" (). This event will be held online on September 30th and it is organized in collaboration with the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Researchers from all over Europe compete to deliver the best research pitch presentation under the format "my thesis in 180 seconds".
A bronze medal to Cerfacs for “Allons-Y À Vélo” !
26 July 2021
A bronze medal to Cerfacs for "Allons-Y À Vélo" ! Cerfacs is on the podium for its cycling regularity during the "Allons-Y À Vélo" period (May 25 - June 25) in its category (100-500 employees).During this period, 37% of Cerfacs employees came to work by bike during at least 4 consecutive days. "Allons-Y À Vélo" is a campaign organised by the association "2 Pieds 2 Roues" and "La Maison du Vélo de Toulouse" to promote the use of the bicycle for every day travels; all details can be found on allonsyavelo.le-pic.org . Cerfacs encourages its employees to use their bicycle to come to work as they benefit from the bicycle mileage allowance (FMD for Forfait Mobilité Durable) of up to 500 Euros per year.
