Dr James Kermode, Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering, is leading a study at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, USA, using an IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer (Mira) to simulate the crumbling of silica. His research team received an INCITE (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment) award from the DOE Office of Science for 125 million processor hours on Mira to develop and run its models.

Dr Kermode's research aims to understand how the chemical bonds in silicon dioxide break; both for prevention of fractures in healthcare, electronics and construction applications, but conversely to improve the breaking of silica for mining purposes.

The US DoE commissioned an article for ASCR Discovery to disseminate the aims and objectives of the research to a broader audience. Speaking on the article production, James said: "I really enjoyed working with a professional writer/editor, as it helped me to think best about how to communicate my results to a general audience".

The article, entitled “Costly Crumbling” is available to read here: ASCR website

More information on Dr Kermode is available here: www.warwick.ac.uk/jrkermode