Steve Plimpton

I retired in October 2022 from Sandia National Laboratories, a US Department of Energy lab, where I worked as a computational scientist in its Center for Computing Research.

I'm still involved in some technical work, particularly for the open source codes listed below.
You can reach me with a question or idea at this email address --- sjplimp at gmail.com --- though I may not respond immediately :)

My research at Sandia involved implementing and using scientific simulations designed for parallel supercomputers, as well as the creation of efficient parallel algorithms. Many of the models I worked on were particle based; some used structured grids or finite elements. Most of the codes I was a developer for were for materials modeling, some for biology and informatics problems.


Software for download:

  • Publications, see more info at Google Scholar
  • University course in parallel computing
  • Humorous quotations


    Current Interests

  • Molecular Dynamics (MD): LAMMPS, ParaDyn, parallel algorithms, simulations (papers, pictures, movies)
  • Direct Simulation Monte Carlo - low-density reacting flows via particles, SPARTA and Icarus
  • Kinetic Monte Carlo - KMC and Metropolis MC simulator SPPARKS
  • Parallel FFTs - parallel distributed 3d/2d FFTs
  • Pizza.py Toolkit - Python-based tools for simulation setup, analysis, plotting, viz


    Past Projects

  • Informatics - data-intensive computing via a MapReduce-MPI library, and a stream-processing PHISH library
  • High Performance Computing (HPC) - neuro-inspired computing, performance comparisons of parallel architectures
  • Biological Cell Modeling - particle-based reaction/diffusion simulator ChemCell
  • Parallel Algorithms: grid transfer, dynamic load-balancing, tinkertoy parallel programming, matrix-vector multiply and many-body algorithms, HPCC RandomAccess (GUPS) benchmark
  • Gene Finding - parallelization of the Genehunter genetic linkage analysis program
  • Radiation Transport - Boltzmann equation for thermal and X-ray radiation
  • ChISELS - surface evolution model of semiconductor processing for micromachine devices (MEMS)
  • QuickSilver - particle-in-cell (PIC) relativistic electromagnetics
  • PRONTO - finite element transient dynamics (crash & boom) with contact detection
  • NIMROD - plasma simulation of tokamaks
  • Electronic Structure - quantum mechanics of solids
  • Image Processing - synthetic aperture radar (SAR) analysis
  • Grain Growth - Potts model on 2-d and 3-d lattices
  • Electron Microscopy - Monte Carlo trajectory simulation
  • Parallel Computing - general overviews