The Nanotechnology Consortium legacy

I am always  happy to see the strong innovation legacy of the Nanotechnology Consortium that I ran from 2004-2010 grow in the Materials Studio releases. The leading edge tools that the Consortium progressed from an academic code to a commercial release include ONETEP (linear scaling DFT), QMERA (coupled electronic-atomistic modelling) as well as the new GULP (atomistic modelling incl reactive forcefield) and DFTB+ (fast, tight binding based DFT). All have been further enhanced and by now are clearly a core part of the Dassault Systemès discrete modelling package. Particularly pleasing is the recent release of the reaction Kinetic Monte Carlo module Kinetix for the general public, about 10 years after it became available to Nanotechnology Consortium members. As other Reaction Kinetic MC tools have moved from academia to a wider industry use (see e.g. Zacros) it is clear that the Nanotech Consortium and all companies that supported it were leading the innovation. I am curious to see where the next wave of Dassault Systemès innovation in materials modelling is going to come from, as sadly the time of consortia seems to be over.

Gerhard Goldbeck