Marija Vranic wins the IBM Scientific Prize 2018

Marija Vranic, a postdoc researcher at IPFN's Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP), has been awarded the 2018 edition of the IBM Scientific Prize for her work “Extreme laser-matter interactions: multi-scale PIC modeling from the classical to QED-dominated regimes”.

IBM Portugal established the first Scientific Prize in 1990, to recognize high merit research in the field of Computational Science, stimulating young investigators in Portugal to showcase their work. For the 2017 edition, Softinsa joined the IBM initiative, to facilitate the collaboration between industrial, academic and research communities. The IBM Scientific Prize is meant for young researchers, below 36 years of age, and is awarded for works of high quality and originality having a strong computational component.

The awarded work takes advantage of the largest supercomputers in the world, with a million computing nodes working in parallel to simulate the processes relevant for experiments in the next generation of laser facilities. This represents the forefront of science in several aspects: the developed numerical tools are state-of-the-art in high-performance-computing and they are employed for studies of interactions at unprecedented laser intensities, where there are new fundamental questions to be answered and new opportunities to be uncovered for industrial and medical applications.

You can learn more about Marija's work in GoLP's Extreme Plasma Physics team website, as well as on the Phys.org website. Check the video Electron-positron QED cascades in four-laser optical trap from extreme plasma physics on Vimeo.