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.
The H2OPE project wins the prize Joseph Fourier 2021
26 July 2021
The H2OPE project wins the prize Joseph Fourier 2021 The prize, launched by Atos and GENCI, aims to reward the work of researchers, academics and industry in two strategic areas: Advanced Computing (HPC, Quantum, Edge) and Artificial Intelligence, and, in the 2021 edition , gives particular importance to Decarbonation. The 1st Prize was awarded to the H2OPE or “H2OPErability for safe and clean gas turbine engines” project from CERFACS in Toulouse. This project aims, via the LES AVBP code, to model at high resolution a mixed combustion process associating conventional fuels with hydrogen (bi-fuels) as one of the most promising technical solutions to achieve "net zero emissions" of CO2 in the industrial sector. It was presented by Walter Agostinelli, Davide Laera, Laurent Gicquel, and Thierry Poinsot. Press release :
Tribute to Françoise Chatelin
23 July 2021
Tribute to Françoise CHATELIN Virtual & Face to Face event @ Cerfacs 14 October 2021, CERFACS, Toulouse (France) 2 pm - 6.30 pm Cerfacs is organizing a half scientific day on Thursday October 14, 2021 in tribute to Françoise Chatelin who left us prematurely on May 14, 2020 After graduating from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1960-63), and her PhD in Mathematics at Grenoble University (1971) , Françoise Chatelin led with worldwide recognition her research in many areas, from spectral theory for linear operators in Banach spaces and finite precision to Dickson algebras. Professor Chatelin taught at the Universities Grenoble 2 - Pierre Mendès-France and Paris 9 - Dauphine before moving to Toulouse in 1996. She became Emeritus Professor in 2015. She was a visiting researcher at Berkeley and Stanford Universities, IBM San Jose (Ca) and Yorktown Heights (NY). For almost a decade, she was a scientific manager in Industry (in charge of intensive computing) first at the Centre Scientifique IBM France in Paris (1985 -1992) and then in the Central Research Lab of Thales (known as Thomson-CSF at that time) near Paris (1992-95). Françoise Chatelin was Head of the Qualitative Computing group at the Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique (Cerfacs) in Toulouse, France. Professor Chatelin has authored four books; the first three are now classic references available from SIAM. Her second book Valeurs Propres de Matrices (Masson, Paris, 1988) has received the IBM - France prize for « Best Scientific and technical publication 1988 ». Beyond her scientific contribution, Françoise Chatelin played a structuring role on research at CERFACS through multiple thesis on innovative topics. This event is devoted to the human and scientific tribute of her life. As a faithful image of the active and passionate woman that she was, the dynamics of this day will be pushed by scientific conferences and stories given by former students and colleagues and will be followed by further discussions between the participants. Programme Registration
CERFACS is involved in the NextSim project
19 July 2021
The primary objective is to increase the capabilities of Computational Fluid Dynamics tools on extreme-scale parallel computing platforms for aeronautical design. The Kick-Off Meeting took place on 12 March 2021. 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. For more information, please visit EuroHPC website : Project webpage :
Cerfacs communication in the Tribune on the CICA project
5 July 2021
Why hot weather will disrupt air travel ? La tribune - July 2, 2021
Research on quantum computing at CERFACS recognized with an award
1 July 2021
A team composed of researchers from CERFACS and LIRMM (Laboratoire d'Informatique, Robotique et de Micro-électronique de Montpellier) is one of the winners of the Open Science Prize challenge, a contest organised by IBM. The challenge aimed at improving the precision of some quantum circuits that are deemed important for the development of quantum computing in the future. With more than 70 participants and 30 teams, this international challenge showed that it was possible to substantially improve the preparation of a specific quantum state, called "graph-state", that may be a crucial step for implementing error correcting codes using quantum computing. IBM's blog ticket is available here:
CMIP6 debriefing workshop – May 2021: a stocktaking and foresight exercise that highlighted the major and long-term investment of the CNRM-CERFACS group in the latest climate model intercomparison international exercise
9 June 2021
The participation of the CNRM-CERFACS group in the international coupled global climate model intercomparison exercise CMIP6 was debriefed on 10 and 11 May. Since the mid-1990s, the various phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), supported by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), have enabled climate science to make significant progress, feeding into the IPCC reports, supporting regional climate modelling activities and downstream climate services. On the balance sheet, the participation of CNRM-CERFACS in the extremely demanding CMIP6 exercise has resulted in a large-scale, high-quality contribution in terms of climate simulations, thanks in particular to the strong commitment of researchers and engineers, the quality of support services and national and international collaborations. The activities mainly took place over the period 2013-2020. Initially, the production environment ("workflow") was set up and the coupled climate models were assembled by capitalising on the development of components (atmosphere, ocean and continental surfaces) carried out over the long term. The actual production of simulations was spread over 2018-2020. During the debriefing, perspectives (scientific objectives, model development, organisation) were drawn up with a view to a new participation of CNRM and CERFACS in CMIP
CERFACS Combustion paper on rocket engines selected as Distinguished Paper at the last Int. Symp. on Comb. in Adelaide
14 April 2021
The paper of C. Laurent 'Heat-release dynamics in a doubly- transcritical LO2/LCH4 cryogenic coaxial jet flame subjected to fuel inflow acoustic modulation’ has been selected at the Distinguished Paper in the Gas Turbine and Rocket Engine Combustion colloquium for the 38th International Symposium on Combustion. This paper authored by Laurent, Staffelbach, Nicoud and T. Poinsot is available here: describes the first LES of a forced doubly transcritical flame.
