Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation assessed COVID-19 as a pandemic, with over 100,000 confirmed cases in over 100 countries (with numbers rapidly increasing). As we know, this new strain of coronavirus, discovered in 2019, can cause acute respiratory infection. Many countries have imposed travel restrictions, limited gatherings and encouraged people to self-isolate and work from home.
OpenFOAM Training
CFD Direct runs an extensive program of CFD Training with OpenFOAM. Chris Greenshields (OpenFOAM co-founder) and Jenya Collings began providing OpenFOAM Training in 2008, just as the world experienced a major financial crash. After that uncertain start, we have gone on to deliver over 350 courses to over 3,500 participants. We host courses in London, Munich, Cologne, Houston, Denver and Chicago, as well as providing on-site training to industrial and academic organisations. What happens to these courses during the period of travel restrictions and home working?
Virtual Training
4 years ago, CFD Direct pioneered a programme of remote Virtual OpenFOAM Training, when it launched its Programming CFD course. We have delivered over 50 virtual courses, including hosting remote participants during our classroom courses in London, Cologne, Denver and Chicago. Remote training is by video conference between the instructor and participants. Training is ‘hands-on’, working on engineering CFD problems through a remote desktop to OpenFOAM running in the cloud. All machines are accessible to the instructor who can then assist with any problems the participant experiences.
Re-scheduling Classroom Courses as Virtual Training
During the period of travel restrictions and home working, CFD Direct will re-schedule classroom courses as Virtual Training. We recognise that supervision takes a little more time remotely so we will:
- extend the schedule of Essential and Applied CFD to a total of 5 days (from 4 days);
- provide an assistant to the instructor on Essential and Applied CFD, to give 1-to-1 support to participants when needed;
- extend the schedule of Programming CFD to 3 days (from 2 days).
Changes to the Schedule
We have currently rescheduled the following 2020 training courses, and will continue to update this page periodically:
- 11-14 May: Cologne Germany, Essential and Applied CFD, changed to 11-15 May, Virtual (Cologne).
- 11-12 June: Denver USA, Programming CFD, changed to 9-11 June, Virtual Americas.
- 15-18 June: Denver USA, Essential and Applied CFD, changed to 15-19 June, Virtual (Denver).
- 7-8 July: London UK, Programming CFD, changed to 7-9 July, Virtual Europe.
- 28 Sep-1 Oct: London UK, Essential and Applied CFD, changed to 28 Sep-2 Oct, Virtual Europe.
- 19-22 Oct: Chicago USA, Essential and Applied CFD, changed to 19-23 Oct, Virtual Americas.
- 2-5 Nov: Munich Germany, Essential and Applied CFD, changed to 2-6 Nov, Virtual Europe.