NEWS

In June, we announced the 29th round of the Open Access Grant Competition. Applications for computing time on the Karolina, Barbora, DGX-2, and LUMI supercomputers can be submitted by employees of Czech research organisations until 2 August 2023. We will announce the results in September.

Find the latest news, not only from our Supercomputing Center in Ostrava,
in the IT4Innovations Newsletter 5/2023.

The most significant science popularisation event in the Czech Republic, the Science Fair, has already passed. This year's seventh edition, traditionally held at the PVO EXPO Praha exhibition centre in Letňany in Prague (8th - 10th June), broke not only records in the number of visitors. Indeed, we couldn't miss out on it.

We invite all IT4Innovations users and research and project partners from various organisations, research institutions, and industries to the 7th Users' Conference of IT4Innovations.

The aim of this special call is to enable the widest possible range of researchers from the Czech Republic to test and gain experience with the GPU accelerated part of the LUMI supercomputer.

The call period and the evaluation of applications will be in an accelerated mode and only in terms of technical readiness, so that testing and benchmarking of the GPU part can start as early as 21 July 2023.

Cell segmentation and tracking are essential for applications in various fields of science and industry. The development and objective evaluation of algorithms for segmenting and tracking cells in time-lapse images from optical microscopes have been the focus of the Cell Tracking Challenge since 2013. The initiative involves research teams from America, Australia, and Europe, including IT4Innovations. The latest collaborative research results of the initiative have been published in the prestigious Nature Methods journal.

In January this year, the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) launched ten centres of excellence that will improve existing computing codes over the next four years to exploit the potential of exascale supercomputers. One of them is the SPACE (Scalable Parallel Astrophysical Codes for Exascale) Centre of Excellence, which will involve scientists from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center. The SPACE project aims to redesign selected codes to fully utilise new computing architectures and use new programming methods, software solutions, and HPC libraries.

Europe's biggest supercomputing conference, ISC 2023, took place in Hamburg. IT4Innovations was one of the exhibitors and presented the Ostrava Supercomputing Centre and its activities at its stand.

Find the latest news, not only from our Supercomputing Center in Ostrava,
in the IT4Innovations Newsletter 4/2023.

Pavel Hobza and his team first contributed to the rewriting of textbooks twenty years ago. This was when they discovered and described the so-called improper hydrogen bond. Together with colleagues from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Jaroslav Heyrovský of the Czech Academy of Sciences and IT4Innovations, he has made yet another discovery. This time it has the potential to simplify the previously adopted definition of the hydrogen bond and to force chemistry students and researchers to rethink their ideas about the substances they study.

Scientists from the Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute (CATRIN) of Palacký University Olomouc and the CEET and IT4Innovations research centres of the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava have developed a unique technology that will enable to use the waste from the production of biodiesel—glycerol—and transform it into useful products, thus increasing the efficiency of existing biofuels. Moreover, the proposed biomaterial based on graphene will replace the acids that have been used to convert glycerol. However, unlike them, it is non-toxic and fully recyclable. The discovery, which was made in collaboration between Czech and Indian institutes, was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

In May this year, we launched the project  “Experimental and theoretical studies of near-infrared-emitting and chiral carbon dot luminophores” supported by the Global Experts programme of the Moravian-Silesian Region. We bring you an interview with Andrey Rogach, an excellent scientist who will bring the know-how of his research group to Ostrava's IT4Innovations.

Europe's largest supercomputing conference – ISC 2023, will take place in Hamburg, Germany. Among the exhibitors, you will find IT4Innovations, which will present the Czech National Supercomputing Center and its activities at booth B209.

The European Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava kicked off its activities at the beginning of this year. Since then, it has provided all interested clients with a complete portfolio of services. The services focus primarily on supporting smaller and medium-sized companies and startups as well as public organisations in deploying and using digital technologies, including providing knowledge and infrastructure, creating tailor-made solutions, and implementing training courses.

A unique Global Experts programme, funded by the Moravian-Silesian Region, is being launched to attract the world's top scientists to local universities. Participating universities include VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, specifically IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is to host Professor Andrey Rogach.

European research and supercomputing centres and leading computer hardware and simulation software manufacturers are joining forces at the MaX (MAterials design at the eXascale) European Centre of Excellence. The MaX project develops simulation software for materials science. It will also focus on the efficient use of exascale supercomputers in its third phase, in which scientists from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center are also involved. This will open up new possibilities for designing and testing materials for applications in critical areas such as clean energy, new IT technologies, and manufacturing.

Find the latest news, not only from our Supercomputing Center in Ostrava,
in the IT4Innovations Newsletter 3/2023.

Scientists from Charles University, IT4Innovations at the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, and the Czech Academy of Sciences collaborate on research into the interaction of actinides with hydrogen. The results of their joint study on these elements have been published in the prestigious Reports on Progress in Physics journal.

The National Competence Centre for HPC celebrates two years of existence in the Czech Republic. During this time, it has helped many companies and public institutions by providing access to supercomputers, technology consulting, and free educational activities. It intends to build on its earlier achievements in the next three-year period of its operation.

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student interested in computer science and supercomputing?
Then we have an exciting offer for you – the pan-European Master programme European Master for High Performance Computing (EUMaster4HPC).