How do I simulate problem X? Joan Adler, Yaron Artzi, Liron ben Bashat, Tzipora Yael Izraeli, Meital Kreif, Ido Lavi, Alexander Leibenzon, Adam Levi, Itai Schlesinger, Elad Toledano, Uria Peretz, Yonatan Weisler and Alon Yagil Technion - IIT, Haifa, Israel, 32000 E-mail: phr76ja@tx.technion.ac.il Abstract. We present reports on projects from the Technion Physics Department’s annual Computational Physics class that are in, near or far away from its lecturer’s personal expertise. 1. Introduction Learning numerical techniques of relevance to their theoretical or experimental research project is a valid reason for a graduate student to take a Computational Physics class. Most universities are not able to provide separate computational classes geared towards each sub-discipline and so lecturers can find themselves supervising projects falling outside their personal research expertise. At the Technion last fall some 20 graduate and final year undergradate students took the Computational Physics class. It is relatively easy to find simulation projects loosely connected to the lecturer’s research area, in that case atomistic simulations of condensed matter or statistical physics. However it is important that each student carries out a project that is relevant and interesting for them, and can be completed with the appropriate effort. When the class includes students from areas such as relativity, optics, plasma physics and types of quantum physics which fall outside the lecturer’s expertise in either topic or algorithm (or both) this must be accounted for. In some cases their supervisors hope said projects will jumpstart a computational component in their research groups. We present projects from the fall 2012 class and describe our pitfalls and successes. In the next section articles based on presentations of projects from the class in recent years will be described. Details of the course structure were presented there and do not need to be repeated. Then some educational projects, designed for class use in undergraduate courses at the Technion will be introduced. Three groups of research projects - in condensed matter/statistical physics, close to condensed matter/statistical physics, and those beyond the lecturer’s personal research experience will then be presented. Not all projects will be described in detail here, but a full list can be found on the class website [1]. 2. Previous presentations and generalities A presentation about the class and its syllabus [2] explained the process whereby each student submits a research proposal halfway through the course in order to decide on topic, langauge, operating system, visualization tools and algorithms. Although the majority of projects