This is so cool! This is the kind of research I do: molecular dynamics and quantum mechanical simulation. I'm not nearly as good at it as the winners of this prize though haha.

I'm glad to see computational research is becoming more popular and accepted. There's a (quickly diminishing) subset of scientists who think computational work is too theoretical, inaccurate, and inapplicable to real-life. This was the case when the field was developed, but it is no longer true.

The exponentially increasing computational power is allowing discoveries that simply can not be performed experimentally because laboratory technology just isn't advanced or capable enough. Who needs to actually study reality if you can just simulate what you need -- and the end result is the same?

I'm not sure many people know this, but our understanding of the laws of physics is advanced enough nowadays to describe almost perfectly everything we observe in everyday life. (Exceptions include things like quantum gravity which don't really matter [ducks to avoid physicists]).

The problem is that if you want to simulate these laws, it requires a lot of computational power. Brute-force approaches are simply ineffective and so simplifications and clever techniques must be developed to reduce the computational effort while giving increasingly accurate results. I think it's the combination of improving computational resources and improving simulation algorithms that are really driving this field.