OMA School on Monte Carlo Simulations at LMU Munich
The second scientific school of the OMA project took place at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, between 6th and 10th November. The school programme was developed and coordinated by Dr. Alfredo Ferrari from CERN and delivered by international experts. It covered the fundamentals of Monte Carlo simulations and combined lectures with hands-on training. School participants were familiarized with Monte Carlo on the specific examples of FLUKA, PENELOPE and Geant4 codes throughout the week. The event brought together fellows from two Liverpool-coordinated networks: OMA and LIVDAT, providing opportunities for networking between major training initiatives.
The school kicked off on Monday morning with an introductory talk by Dr. Alfredo Ferrari, followed by a talk on principles of Monte Carlo calculations and codes by Prof. Francesc Salvat from the University of Barcelona. The extensive programme of the day included an overview of various codes: Geant4 was presented by Dr. George Dedes (LMU Munich), PENELOPE by Prof. Francesc Salvat and FLUKA by Dr. Alfredo Ferrari. Mr. Eleftherios Skordis from University of Liverpool/CERN introduced the participants to FLAIR (FLUKA Advanced Interface).
The second day provided more insight into PENELOPE, with lectures by Prof. José Mª Fernández Varea from the University of Barcelona and Dr. Lorenzo Brualla from Universitätsklinikum Essen. The afternoon was devoted to a hands-on session and included exercises with PENELOPE and Geant4.
The day finished off with participation in an international outreach event ‘Marie Curie Day’ https://marie-curie-day-2017.org/ . All OMA fellows contributed to an outreach poster session, which was followed by a talk ‘The impact of Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions to support education and research in ion beam cancer therapy’ by Prof. Katia Parodi of LMU.
Exercises with FLUKA – hands-on session
The talks on Wednesday focused on the FLUKA code, with Geometry in FLUKA by Eleftherios Skordis, FLUKA models by Dr. Alfredo Ferrari, Ionization and transport in FLUKA by Dr. Francesc Salvat Pujol and Accelerators in FLUKA by Eleftherios Skordis.
Thursday provided further understanding of this code, with lectures by Dr. Andrea Mairani from Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Centre, covering heavy ion beams and radioactivity, scoring and medical applications in FLUKA. The talks were followed by a computer exercises session on FLUKA and its medical applications.
On the final day of the school the participants learned about Geant4 advanced examples, presented by Dr. Marco Pinto and Dr. George Dedes (LMU). The talk on Outlook in Penelope was given by Dr. Francesc Salvat Pujol and the talk on Outlook in FLUKA by Dr. Alfredo Ferrari. The participants also received an overview of GeantV, with Dr. Andrei Gheata (CERN) presenting Outlook in GeantV and Dr. Sofia Vallecorsa (Gangneung-Wonju National University) giving a talk on GeantV: machine learning techniques.
All talks and exercises are available via https://indico.cern.ch/event/656336