Serbia – SCL@IPB

Welcome to Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital of Serbia and its largest city, as well as its cultural and educational center. It is located at the confluence of rivers Sava and Danube, and more recently it became the center of tourism in the region, widely known for its nightlife, historic sites, and the large number of festivals and cultural events. This is why every newcomer wants to stay at least one day longer.

The city has historically been under various influences. Its architecture is full of diversity, across the Central-European-style village Zemun, over partly Turkish style of the old city, to the modern buildings of New Belgrade. Not far from the city center is the largest temple in this part of Europe, Temple of St. Sava, as well as the new “Bridge at Ada”, which stands out from its surroundings by a huge central pillar with the height of 200m. Arena Sports Hall, which can accommodate more than 20,000 people, was built in 2005 and often hosts performances of major stars of the world music scene.

Knez Mihailova Street stretches through the very heart of the city. It is a pedestrian zone with many summer gardens and many stores by the top world brands. The street ends by a medieval fortress Kalemegdan, which is an ideal place to escape from the traffic jams and enjoy a beautiful view over the the two Belgrade rivers and a so-called “War Island”. Inevitable destinations for the nightlife are definitely bohemian quarter “Skadarlija”, as well as the countless number of disco-boats on the river Sava. Here you can usually expect traditional Balkan sounds, and the evening is sure to be rounded off by visiting one of the many clubs where regular guests are the stars of electronic music from the region and beyond. “Skadarska” street and its surroundings is the home to some of the best and oldest restaurants in Belgrade. At one end of the neighborhood is Belgrade’s oldest brewery, founded in the first half of the 19th century. A place for fans of alternative music is “KST”  (Students of Technology Club), located in the basement of the technical faculties building. One of the most famous places for alternative cultural events in the city is the “SKC” (Student Cultural Centre), located across from the building “Beogradjanka”, one of the highest buildings of Belgrade. Concerts by the numerous domestic and foreign well-known groups are often held in the “SKC”, as well as art exhibitions and public debates and discussions.

PHD Students at IPB

University of Belgrade, is educating more than 80,000 students, while the cultural network contains a large number of museums (National Museum, Ethnographic Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Nikola Tesla, etc..). Belgrade also has its own theater and film festival, but young people are mostly attracted by a weeklong beer festival held in August at “Usce” site. The entry to the festival is free and performances by a large number of rock stars, mostly from the former Yugoslavia, is part of the programme.

Summers in Belgrade are warm and provide many opportunities for outdoor activities. The largest numbers of citizens are seeking shelter from the heat in the artificial lake by the river Sava called “Ada Ciganlija”. Beside sunbathing and swimming, here you can rent a bike and equipment for water sports, golf, rugby, baseball, tennis and paint-ball and find a playmates for soccer, basketball, volleyball, or simply enjoy summer afternoon barbecuing with friends.

Public transport includes bus, tram and trolley lines that run throughout the day and night, connecting all parts of the city.

Serbia, though a small country, has always nourished sport talents. Their biggest success so far was to take a number of World and European medals in basketball, volleyball and waterpolo, and the current world number one tennis player Novak Djokovic was also born in Belgrade. The two biggest sports clubs in the country, Red Star Belgrade, winner of Champions League football in 1991, and Partizan, winner of the Eurocup basketball a year later. In 2009, Belgrade was the host of 25th Summer Universiade, with over 10,000 participants.

If you are in Belgrade, it is certainly recommended to visit other cultural and entertainment events in Serbia, such as the EXIT music festival in the city of Novi Sad, rafting on the river Tara, ethno village Woodentown, managed by the world-famous film director Emir Kusturica, and many others.

Scientific Computing Laboratory @ Institute of Physics Belgrade (SCL@IPB)

Scientific computing has become a tool as vital as experimentation and theory for addressing twenty-first century scientific challenges. The Scientific Computing Laboratory at the Institute of Physics Belgrade aims to be at the forefront of the development of this novel research tool.

SCL

The laboratory was established in 2004, and in 2006 was recognized as a EU centre of excellence for computational modeling of complex systems. It’s researchers look at simulations and models as heuristic tools in a broad problem-solving process. Modern high-performance computing facilities make possible the first step in this process: a view of new and previously inaccessible domains in science and the building up of intuition regarding new phenomenology. The final goal of this process is to translate this newfound intuition into better algorithms, new analytical results, novel technological applications.

SCL is at the focal point of the development of high-performance computing in Serbia and South East Europe. It coordinates the Academic and Educational Grid Initiative of Serbia (AEGIS), participates in pan-European (EGI-Inspire) and regional (HP-SEE) Grid projects, and represents Serbia in the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). In 2008 SCL helped launch Serbia’s ambitious seven-year supercomputing initiative. The centerpiece of this initiative will be the new National Supercomputing and Data Storage Facility (NSDSF) Blue Danube.

Antun Balaz

Antun Balaz

Dr. Antun Balaz is an Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Physics Belgrade. He holds a BSc, MSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Belgrade and has published more than 35 papers in leading scientific journals in high-energy and condensed matter physics. In addition to his research position at the Institute of Physics Belgrade, Dr. Balaz also holds a teaching position at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, where he lectures on Monte Carlo simulations and quantum field theory to masters and PhD students. At IPB and at the University of Novi Sad he supervises several PhD and masters students in physics and in computer science.

The main research interests of Antun Balaz are related to the functional formalism in quantum theory and its application to studies of ultra-cold quantum gases, including the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation and effects of interaction and disorder. In his research, he makes extensive use of numerical methods such as path integral Monte Carlo and exact diagonalization. Together with his collaborators, Antun Balaz has recently developed a systematic procedure for obtaining series of effective actions that speed-up the convergence of discretized path integrals to their continuum limits. In studies of ultracold quantum gases, he focuses on nonlinear excitations of collective oscillation modes and density waves, effects of dipolar interaction and disorder, Bose-glass phase transition and fragmentation of Bose-Einstein condensates. Together with collaborators, Dr. Balaz has developed and published algorithms and numerical codes for path integral Monte Carlo simulations based on discretized effective actions, as well as codes for simulation of imaginary- and real-time dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates with contact and dipolar interaction.

Antun Balaz started his research career at the Institute of Physics Belgrade in 1998 and from 2000 till 2010 he was the head of IPB Computing Facilities. He is one of the founders of Scientific Computing Laboratory and is responsible for its growth (in both human and computing resources) and transformation to one of the largest HPC centers in the region. Through a series of regional and pan-European Grid projects, Serbia became a part of a worldwide development of a new paradigm in computing – Grids. Antun Balaz coordinates SCL’s involvement in European Grid Initiative (EGI) and acts as a technical manager of Serbia’s National Grid Initiative AEGIS. Parallel to this, he also coordinates SCL’s work in the high performance computing arena, through the regional HP-SEE project and European supercomuting initiative PRACE.

Nenad Vukmirovic

Nenad Vukmirovic

Dr. Nenad Vukmirovic holds a BSc in Physics and in Electrical Engineering from the University of Belgrade. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2007 from the University of Leeds. From 2007 till 2010 Dr. Vukmirovic was a postdoctoral fellow at the Computational Research Division and Materials Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2010 he returned to Serbia and continued his research at the Scientific Computing Laboratory of the Institute of Physics Belgrade as an Associate Research Professor. He received the prestigious FP7 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant for the project “Electronic transport in organic materials” for the period 2011-2015. He has published more than 45 papers in leading scientific journals in condensed matter physics, applied physics, chemical physics and materials science. He supervises several PhD and master students.

The research interests of Nenad Vukmirovic are related to theory and simulation of electronic structure and electronic transport in organic semiconducting materials and inorganic nanostructures. Particular emphasis is put on the applications of these simulations for understanding the performance of realistic devices, such as lasers, photodetectors, solar cells and batteries. In the area of inorganic nanostructures, he worked on semi-empirical methods for a description of electron and exciton states in quantum dots and developed the theoretical framework for the simulation of mid- and far-infrared optoelectronic devices based upon them. In the area of organic materials, he developed the methods based on density functional theory capable of describing the systems with as much as tens of thousands of atoms that enable the calculations of the density of states, the wavefunction localization lengths, the electron-phonon coupling constants and eventually the mobility.