Report on the TOUGH Symposium 2023
TOUGH Symposium 2023 Group Photo (18 September 2023)
See the Photo Gallery below to download this and other photos from the Symposium.
The tenth triennial TOUGH Symposium 2023 was held in person at Berkeley Lab September 18-20, 2023, after two years of postponement due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. It was wonderful to see many of the experienced and new TOUGH users from around the world. Just under 100 people from 24 different countries attended. Many registrants also attended the various TOUGH training courses held onsite before and after the symposium.
There were 40 talks presented in the Bldg 66 Auditorium over 2.5 days. Approximately 18 posters were presented on the first day at the evening reception in the Bldg 91 third-floor foyer supplemented by a huge buffet and drinks. Most of these talks and posters are available at the links in the agenda.
The symposium banquet was held once again on the second night in the venue high up in the U.C. Berkeley Memorial Stadium, with excellent buffet dinner and conversation. The after-dinner speaker was Jef Caers (Stanford Univ.) who gave an entertaining talk entitled, “AI you likely never heard of and why it matters for the energy transition.”
On the final day (Wednesday) at the end of the last session, the best-student-presentation award was given to Hyunjeong Jeon from Yonsei University, Korea.
Following the formal adjournment of the Symposium on Wednesday (September 20), Keurfon Luu gave a complimentary short course on toughio, a new Python toolset for TOUGH input and output processing.
Speaking for ourselves and LBNL in general, we look forward to seeing you again in 2026.
-The Organizing Committee (Curt Oldenburg (chair), Yingqi Zhang, Matthew Reagan, Ram Kumar, Christine Doughty, and Eric Sonnenthal)