In early April, 58 scientists were granted computational resources for their research projects. This was in the framework of the Open Access Grant Competition (OAGC for short) and its 24th edition. A total of 1 497 623 node hours were distributed across the winning projects.
Karolina, Barbora, DGX-2 as well as Finnish LUMI. The winning projects will all be investigated using these supercomputers. The LUMI supercomputer is a long-awaited novelty to which five researchers have been granted access in the 24th OAGC. The calculations of Czech scientists on one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are made possible thanks to the IT4Innovations' membership in the LUMI consortium.
In the 24th Open Access Grant Competition, researchers applied for a total of 1 574 002 node hours. The applications were reviewed by the Allocation Committee, which decided to partially redistribute computational resources and slightly reduce the allocations for some of the evaluated projects. In total, the 58 winning projects were allocated 1 497 623 node hours, which is about 5% less than the requested amount.
The researchers in the field of materials science requested the most computational resources accounting for 65%. Projects from life sciences came in second place with 20% and the bronze medal went to projects from earth sciences with 6%. The most computationally demanding project of the 24th OAGC was the one of Dana Nachtigallová from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS entitled "Computational modelling of photocatalytic water splitting and hydrogen formation on TiO2 surfaces".
And how were the particular institutions going on in this? In the 24th OAGC, scientists from the Czech Academy of Sciences requested the most computational resources (37%). They were followed by researchers from VSB-TUO (24%) and the third place with 10% went to Charles University in Prague.
Supported projects within the 24th Open Access Grant Competition
Open Access Grant Competitions (OAGC) are the most common way to obtain computational resources at IT4Innovations. For example, in 2021, 74% of all the computational resources provided by IT4Innovations were used by projects applying within the Open Access Grant Competitions, 20% were for non-commercial projects approved within the Directors’ Discretion scheme by the IT4Innovations management, and 5% of the total were distributed within grant competitions launched by EuroHPC JU and PRACE. The least amount of computational resources amounting to 1% was used within commercial rentals.
The OAGC is announced three times a year and is open to researchers and academics from the Czech Republic, for whom computational resources are provided entirely free of charge.