Outline of the school

The primary aim of the XXXI Canary Islands Winter School is to contribute to the education of the next generation of theoretical astrophysicists in the methods of computational fluid dynamics and practices in high-performance super-computing. The school will include lectures, hands-on exercises, tutorials and seminars.

We will provide a comprehensive overview of applications of computational fluid dynamics over a large range of astrophysical scales and a detailed description of the numerical algorithms employed. By the end of the school, the students will have a broad knowledge of numerical techniques and practical experience with parallel codes, supercomputers and data formats. Students will be in contact with researchers working on different astrophysical problems and using similar numerical techniques, in order to foster inter-collaboration among different fields of research.

Participants of the Winter School will have the opportunity to display their current work by presenting a poster.

Given its broad scope, the school is addressed to students in any research field in astrophysics, and using different kinds of numerical algorithms and codes. 

Renowned specialists in the field will lecture on computational fluid dynamics applied to the following topics:

  • Fluid dynamics, conservation laws and waves (Fernando Moreno-Insertis)
  • Dynamics of solar and stellar convection zones (Maarit Käpylä)
  • Solar atmosphere (Matthias Rempel)
  • General relativity and compact objects (Sascha Husa)
  • Star and planet formation (Åke Nordlund)
  • Interstellar medium (Stefanie Walch-Gassner)
  • Galaxy formation (Tom Theuns)

​The lectures will be complemented by hands-on tutorials. In them, the students will carry out small simulations designed to match what the students will learn during the lectures.

Seminars and tutorials on the following topics will be provided:

  • The European infrastructure for high-performance computing: how to apply for computing time (Sergi Girona)
  • CFD applications outside astrophysics (Ramon Codina Rovira)
  • A numerical simulation framework for the exa-scale era
  • The new era of quantum computing
  • Hands-on exercises including a brief introduction to the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library and the HDF5 file format

The Winter School will take place in San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain) from Tuesday 19 to Thursday 28 November 2019. The lectures, which will take place on working days, will be delivered in English. Speakers will present their topics in series of 45-mins lectures. Additionally, there will be afternoon hands-on and tutorial sessions. Links to the material used by the lecturers, as well as videos of the lectures, will be made available on the website of the school. Visits to the IAC's Headquarter in La Laguna, the Teide Observatory in Tenerife and the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma will be scheduled as part of the activities.

Those interested in attending the school should register following the instructions provided in the registration page. Once registered, please login to the personal area of the website and complete the required information. In addition we request a letter of reference from a thesis advisor or Head of Department which should be emailed to winter@iac.es. These should reach the IAC not later than 30 June 2019. Selected candidates will be informed by mid July.