We are thrilled to announce the winner of this year’s CoSeC Impact Award.
CoSeC have awarded the 2025 CoSeC Impact Award to Dr. David Lusher of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for his exceptional contributions to the scientific community.
The CoSeC Impact Award recognizes individuals whose work has had a significant positive impact on the scientific community, in close collaboration with CoSeC and the communities we support.
Dr Lusher is the co-creator and lead developer of OpenSBLI, a widely used open-source software package that has become essential for researchers in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The code is used by researchers and organizations worldwide, and key UK research communities, like CCP Turbulence and UKTC, rely on it heavily.
OpenSBLI is an innovative automatic code-generation framework that integrates Python-based symbolic algebra with the Oxford Parallel Structured (OPS) domain-specific language to generate efficient parallel simulation codes for a wide range of high-performance computing architectures, including GPUs. Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) performed in OpenSBLI have led to numerous publications on fundamental fluid dynamics, spanning high-speed airfoil flows, transition, compressible turbulence, and shock wave/boundary layer interactions (SBLI). OpenSBLI has also contributed extensive flow datasets to the NASA Turbulence Modelling Resource (NASA-TMR). David’s work has had an immense impact, providing an open alternative to closed-source codes and fostering a more collaborative research environment.
As one of our panellist’s noted, code development is a contribution that academia has traditionally overlooked, and we are proud to recognize its profound importance with this award.
Dr Lusher has enjoyed a remarkable career so far. He self-taught as an independent candidate for his A levels, before moving onto the University of Southampton, there achieving an MPhys in physics and mathematics with 1st class honours, and later a PhD in Fluid Dynamics in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics group. He was a visiting researcher at NASA Langley before moving to the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology for post-doctoral research. He moved to JAXA in Tokyo three years ago, first as a JSPS post-doctoral Research Fellow and now as an Invited Researcher. At JAXA, his research interests include GPU-based scientific software development, turbulence modelling, and large-scale simulations of off-design aerodynamics phenomena such as aircraft buffet and stall.
“I am honoured to receive this prestigious computational science impact award from CoSeC. The main development of OpenSBLI was undertaken during my PhD at the University of Southampton with support from members of the CCP Turbulence and UKTC communities. Since joining JAXA, I have extended the capabilities and scope of OpenSBLI through collaborative research with the University of Southampton, NASA Langley, and other international partners. This work has enabled large-scale high-fidelity simulations of complex fluid flow phenomena, such as transonic airfoil buffet, that were previously out of reach. CoSeC-supported OpenSBLI training workshops have given me the opportunity to engage with new users of the code in support of their research projects and maintain strong links with CFD research within the UK. I am grateful for the support from staff at STFC and look forward to seeing future research applications on the next generation of UK high performance computers using open-source CFD codes such as OpenSBLI.”, says Dr Lusher.
“We are delighted to offer this award to David,” says CoSeC Director Stephen Longshaw. “OpenSBLI, the code that David has developed is a key one that has already been extensively used in a number of our communities, including CCP Turbulence and UKTC. It is a key UK code that was used as part of the development suite for our current national supercomputer ARCHER2.”
CoSeC offers their sincerest congratulations to Dr Lusher on this well-deserved recognition.