THE TOWLER INSTITUTE


CASTEP Festival 2006

The CASTEP Festival took place from Thursday 31st August - Thursday 7th September 2006 at the Towler Institute. This event reunited, for the first time in many years, the six original authors of the modern version of the CASTEP plane-wave density functional theory program - a completely new version of the software suite originally developed by Prof. Mike Payne's group at the University of Cambridge in the early 1990s. Upon arrival, the chaps immediately rearranged the lecture hall, with all thirty-odd seats stacked away and replaced by a large table full of computers in the centre of the nave in front of the blackboard. A week of hot discussion and programming followed, with the odd nice walk in the mountains, and lashings of great Tuscan food and wine in the evenings (after which some of these keen fellows continued working until 6am). Astonishing.

Conference programme (PDF)
Photo slideshow

List of participants (from left to right)

Keith Refson, Stewart Clark, Phil Hasnip, Matt Probert, Matt Segall, Chris Pickard