The Helmholtz Software Award goes to CP2K

The CP2K code, developed by Jürg Hutter’s group at the University of Zurich with support by MARVEL, has received the Scientific Originality Prize at the second Helmholtz Software Award, assigned by the Helmholtz Association, Germany’s largest research organization.

CP2K is a quantum chemistry and solid state physics software package that can perform atomistic simulations of solid state, liquid, molecular, periodic, material, crystal, and biological systems. It provides a general framework for different modeling methods such as DFT using the mixed Gaussian and plane waves approaches GPW and GAPW. It is open-source and allows simulations, spectroscopy, vibrational analysis and energy minimization on a vast variety of theory levels. The software is maintained and distributed by the CP2K Foundation, that was founded in Zürich  in 2015 by Jürg Hutter, Joost VandeVondele, and Ole Schütt.

The Scientific Originality Prize is the main one (amounting to 5,000 Euros) among the prizes that make up the Helmholtz Software Award. This year’s edition call saw a total 35 submissions from 17 research centres. Based on reviews by a panel of 14 international experts, a committee representing the Helmholtz Federated IT Services (HIFIS), the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA), and the Helmholtz Open Science Office took the final decision on the awardees.