College: yesterday's snow, tomorrow's ice sheet

An interim meeting of the Natural and Engineering Sciences College of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes – German Academic Scholarship Foundation – took place at the institute for Mechanics from 19 to 21 May 2025. Under the supervision of Prof. Angelika Humbert, Prof. Ralf Müller and Rabea Sondershaus, the students of AG3 are working on the mechanical description of glaciers and ice sheets. The focus is on modeling the material behavior of glacier ice and the simulating cracks in ice. The College is running since March 2024 and will extend over two years. During this time, the group meets regularly to collaboratively work on various research questions.

At the interim meeting, the students received an introduction to the Lichtenberg high-performance computer at TU Darmstadt. The remaining time was used for a hackathon, during which the first simulations were successfully carried out on the Lichtenberg system.