About us

The code is developed by the Castep Developers Group (CDG) who are all UK based academics. Current CDG members are:

  • Matthew Segall - Main author of the code specification, and responsible for all the low-level communications and basis set coding. Also the population analysis algorithms.
  • Matt Probert - Responsible for the geometry optimisation and molecular dynamics coding (including path-integral molecular dynamics), and keeper of the parameters and algor modules.
  • Stewart Clark - Responsible for the band structure and exchange-correlation functional coding and keeper of the cell and FFT modules. Also co-author of the linear response code.
  • Chris Pickard - Responsible all pseudopotential coding, amongst other things. Also co-author of the NMR code.
  • Phil Hasnip - Responsible for the electronic energy minimisation coding (including density mixing and ensemble DFT), OpenMP threading, band-parallelism, run-time profiling and parallel efficiency report, and wavefunction subroutines. Also works on optimisation and parallel performance.
  • Keith Refson - Responsible for phonon and E-field calculations and co-author of the linear response code.
  • Jonathan Yates- Co-author of the NMR code, responsible for spectral module (dos, optics, eels), and architect of the spin-orbit functionality.
  • Albert Bartok-Partay - Main author of the meta-GGA code, and contributor to many aspects of CASTEP.
  • Mike Payne - CASTEP creator and general overseer of the whole project.

Over the years many other people have contributed code to CASTEP including:

  • Peter Haynes - wrote much of the initial density mixing code
  • Jim White - many contributions to initial density mixing and electronic minimisation code
  • Victor Milman - much bug spotting and fixing throughout code
  • Niri Govind - transition state search code
  • Michael Gibson - non-local exchange-correlation functionals code
  • Paul Tulip - contributions to linear response code
  • Vincent Cocula - anti-ferromagnetic initial state code
  • Barbara Montanari - contributions to finite displacement phonons code
  • David Quigley - contributions to molecular dynamics code
  • Maff Glover - path integral molecular dynamics code
  • Leo Bernasconi - maximally-localised Wannier function code
  • Shang-Peng Gao - core-level spectra code
  • Erik McNellis - DFT-D (semi-empirical dispersion correction) code
  • Joerg Meyer - contributions to DFT+D code plus castep2cube tool
  • Alexander Perlov - contributions to LDA+U code
  • Dominik Jochym - Responsible for the TDDFT code, HPC optimization of checkpoint/read code, DFPT-Raman and NLO.
  • Martin Plummer - multiprocessor optimizations of parallel FFT
  • Chris Armstrong - shared-memory optimizations of parallel FFT
  • Julian Gale - code for PBEsol XC functional
  • Joly Aarons - code for low-memory BFGS (L-BFGS) algorithm
  • Brent Walker - contributions to path-integral MD (PIMD) code
  • Daniel Jones - non-collinear magnetism and spin-orbit coupling
  • Ian Bush - shared-memory interface and software infrastructure, prototype parallel iterative matrix diagonaliser
  • Ed Higgins - OpenMP threading and parallel iterative matrix diagonaliser
  • Andrew Morris - Posix compliant command-line argument handling
  • Tim Green - J-coupling with Ultrasoft Pseudopotentials
  • Bi-Ching Shi - EPR g-tensor
  • Chris Armstrong - Shared memory optimisation
  • Jacob Wilkins - Pair potential and Hugoniostat
  • Peter Byrne - 2n+1 Raman, Dispersion corrections, electron-phonon coupling, spin constraints, castep python
  • James Womack - DLMG interface (implicit solvent)
  • Jacek Dziedzic - DLMG interface (implicit solvent)
  • Luc LeBlanc - XDM
  • Tamas Stenczel - GAP interface
  • James Kermode - Castep python, geometry optimisation precondictioner
  • Simone Sturniolo - NEB
  • Benjamin Shi - X-ray structure factors
  • Ben Durham - LibXC interface, spin-polarised DFPT, solvation forces
  • Matthew Evans - ACE
  • Rachel Strong - EPR g-tensor
  • Sian Joyce - NMR J-coupling
  • Matthew Smith - ACE
  • Zachery Hawkhead - Source-free XC functionals
  • Visagan Ravindran - Local Fock Exchange (LFX)
  • Tom Hollands - Optimised Effective Potential (OEP)
  • Arjen Tamerus - OpenMP threading

Many of the original library pseudopotential files and on-the-fly pseudopotential definitions were contributed by Ming-Hsien Lee.