text: 125,2,1267437876905738240,2283510367,Eamonn Kerins,"New paper on arXiv (<LINK>) led by my PhD student, David Specht, describing our shiny new MaBulS-2 microlensing simulator. Try for yourself at <LINK>  We've tested it against the massive 8,000 event dataset from OGLE-IV. Spot the difference? <LINK> The really amazing thing about MaBulS-2 is that it allows anyone to request a bespoke calculation in a few seconds that would take days of high-performance parallel computing to calculate directly! With MaBulS-2 we have a theoretical tool that is fit the the era of large-scale microlensing datasets. We're now much better placed to optimize how future billion-dollar surveys like @NASARoman and @ESA_Euclid can best look for cool exoplanets. #microlensing #exoplanets",https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14668,"Galactic microlensing datasets now comprise in excess of $10^4$ events, and with the advent of next generation microlensing surveys that may be undertaken with facilities such as the Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST) and Roman Space Telescope (formerly WFIRST), this number will increase significantly. So too will the fraction of events with measurable higher order information such as finite source effects and lens-source relative proper motion. Analysing such data requires a more sophisticated Galactic microlens modeling approach. We present a new second-generation Manchester-Besan\c{c}on Microlensing Simulator (MaB$\mu$lS-2), which uses a version of the Besan\c{c}on population synthesis Galactic model that provides good agreement with stellar kinematics observed by HST towards the bulge. MaB$\mu$lS-2 provides high-fidelity signal-to-noise limited maps of the microlensing optical depth, rate and average timescale towards a 400 sq. degree region of the Galactic bulge in several optical to near-infrared pass-bands. The maps take full account of the unresolved stellar background as well as limb-darkened source profiles. Comparing MaB$\mu$lS-2 to the efficiency-corrected OGLE-IV 8,000 event sample shows a much improved agreement over the previous version of MaB$\mu$lS, and succeeds in matching even small-scale structural features in the OGLE-IV event rate map. However, there remains evidence for a small under-prediction in the event rate per source and over-prediction in timescale. MaB$\mu$lS-2 is available online (<www.mabuls.net>) to provide on-the-fly maps for user supplied cuts in survey magnitude, event timescale and relative proper motion. ","MaB$\mu$lS-2: high-precision microlensing modelling for the large-scale