The group ran ECMA_QE 2026, its own computational materials school

Between 23 and 25 June the group ran ECMA_QE 2026, the Escuela Computacional de Materiales Avanzados: a three-day school on modelling materials from first principles with Quantum ESPRESSO, on the Universidad de los Andes high-performance cluster.

The school was organised end to end by the group — programme, cluster access, logistics and teaching. It is meant to run every year.

The format

Each day pairs theory with practice. Mornings open on density functional theory: the many-body quantum problem, pseudopotentials, and how the approximations behave in systems of reduced dimension. Then participants move to the cluster — SSH, Slurm, the anatomy of a Quantum ESPRESSO input file — and run the calculations themselves.

Running alongside is a guided research project. Every participant formulates one, executes it on the cluster, and presents it at the end. That is the part that turns a workshop into a school: you do not leave having watched someone else’s calculation converge.

What it covered

This edition concentrated on low-dimensional systems and unconventional magnetism — MXenes, two-dimensional monolayers and heterostructures, quantum dots, high-entropy oxides, and magnetic phenomena at the nanoscale. The overlap with the group’s own work is deliberate: several of these are live projects here.

Theory sessions were led by Dr. Rafael González of the Departamento de Física y Geociencias at Universidad del Norte, who works on DFT modelling, the electronic structure of solids and nanotechnology.

Organised by undergraduates

Worth saying plainly: the organising and logistics were carried by three undergraduate members of the group — Gabriela Rodríguez, Gabriel Estiven Borrero Silva and Alejandra Del Mar Osorio Mora, who handled registration, the venue and participant support alongside the scientific programme.

The school has its own site at ecma.uniandes.edu.co, where the agenda, practical information and materials live. Future editions will be announced there and on our events page.