Computational HEP 2025 summer school participants and instructors

Computational HEP 2025 summer school participants and instructors outside of Physics building at UC Berkeley. Photo credit: Haichen Wang, UC Berkeley / LBNL.

The Department of Energy Computational High-Energy Physics training programs combined again for the 2025 summer school, hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley. The sessions held June 23-27 introduced hands-on development exercises, high-performance computing lectures, open-source software community introductions, and career panel discussions.

This training event was supported by the four Department of Energy programs TAC-HEP, WATCHEP, C2-THE-P2, and LGT4HEP. The school was held on the West Coast for the first time, and it was organized by mentors from the Western Advanced Training for Computational High-Energy Physics (WATCHEP).

Graduate student trainees working in groups

Graduate student trainees worked in groups during a hands-on exercise with Git repositories. Photo credit: Paolo Calafiura, LBNL.

The trainees learned about virtualization in the DOE computing complex, computer networking from ESnet, and tools for development like Git, debuggers, and AI agents. A new panel compared the science workflows for different experimental projects in high-energy physics: energy, cosmic, and neutrino.

A career panel composed of DOE program manager, DOE lab senior leadership, lab staff, and university faculty introduced students to the breadth of opportunities for computational high-energy physicists in academia and the DOE.

The summer school program concluded with special tours of the Advanced Light Source under the landmark 184-inch cyclotron dome at LBNL and the Perlmutter supercomputer in the NERSC operations center.

People listening to tour guide in front of Perlmutter supercomputer at NERSC

Trainees and mentors visited the Perlmutter supercomputer and operations area at NERSC. Photo credit: Paolo Calafiura, LBNL.

The summer school was very successful in helping to build community within the cohorts. Student trainees had a chance to exchange news about their research projects and their experience in high-energy physics.

The detailed agenda and timetable for the summer school are online.