Friday, 6 October, was in the spirit of the mysterious, about which Albert Einstein once said that "it is the source of all true art and science." At IT4Innovations, almost 700 visitors uncovered the secrets of the National Supercomputing Centre and supercomputers as part of the Europe-wide event, Researchers' Night.
Thanks to the superexcursions, over 100 people got a glimpse behind the scenes at IT4Innovations. They walked through the IT4Innovations building from the basement up to the roof. For example, they were shown the unique backup power system, the modified atmosphere in the data room, and the water cooling system for the supercomputers.
The Researchers' Night at IT4Innovations aimed to reveal the secrets of supercomputers and how they play an important role in research. Thanks to the lectures, visitors learned about integrating artificial intelligence into emergency call reception and how numerical simulations help scientists solve complex problems. About 60 visitors dived into a virtual world for half an hour. In our Visualisation and Virtual Reality Lab, they put on 3D glasses and saw immersive visualisations of scientific projects on which IT4Innovations scientists collaborate with experts from various companies and institutions.
The game Agents, Save our Supercomputing Centre, joined visitors of all ages, the youngest and the oldest, who accepted the challenge to save our supercomputing centre. The one who plays is not angry, as the Czech saying says. As IT4I agents, they learned, for example, about the unit used in supercomputing – flops per second, the importance of water for Ostrava supercomputers, what a supercomputer consists of, and which scientific field is most represented in our supercomputing projects.
Visitors played robot football, where they had to create their game strategy, browsed through sci-fi comics where supercomputers act as superheroes, used virtual reality to walk through our data room, where not everyone is allowed because of the artificial atmosphere, and entered the fantastic world of nano-optics.
Nearly seven hundred people visited the Friday world of supercomputers in one night. The IT4Innovations team thanks everyone for coming and looks forward to next year's event.
