PRESS RELEASES

Prague, 14 November, 2024 – An unparalleled interdisciplinary centre of excellence, CLARA, the first of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe, will be established in the Czech Republic over the next six years to focus on developing a new generation of applications using artificial intelligence, computational modelling, and quantum computing. The aim is to push the boundaries of research in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease, by processing large-scale multidimensional biological and clinical data using powerful supercomputers and quantum methods. The centre has a total budget of €43 mil. (CZK 1.1 bln.), with the European Union providing €15 mil. (CZK 380 mil.) under the Horizon Europe Teaming for Excellence programme.

Luxembourg, 26 September 2024 – Europe has taken another step towards enhancing the European quantum computing infrastructure by signing a contract for the acquisition of the LUMI-Q consortium's quantum computer. The quantum computer will be housed in Ostrava, Czech Republic, at the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, part of the VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. The contract was signed between the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) and IQM Quantum Computers, the company selected to supply the unique technology.

Over the last ten years, we have seen several pandemics. The Zika, Ebola, flu, and COVID-19 pandemics have significantly impacted global health, the economy, and society. These pandemics have created a need for collaboration, prevention, and rapid response to new infectious disease threats. The results of research involving researchers from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava should help. The research aims to create a range of small molecule-based antiviral agents that can be widely used and rapidly developed to treat infectious diseases.

Ostrava, 5 August – The European FFplus initiative is looking for innovative companies and start-ups. It will distribute EUR 8 million to selected companies that decide to use a supercomputer to address their needs. The initiative is aimed at businesses with no previous experience in supercomputing or those active in the artificial intelligence (AI) field. The companies will receive not only financial support but also access to supercomputing infrastructure and expert advice from HPC experts.

Ostrava, 16 July 2024 – Protein aggregation is a complex biological process linked to various devastating human diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Accurate prediction of protein aggregation propensity is crucial for developing effective treatments and prevention strategies. To address this challenge, researchers from IT4Innovations at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, in collaboration with the International Clinical Research Centre and Masaryk University (MU), have launched AggreProt, a novel web server designed to predict protein aggregation.

Ostrava, 24 June 2024 – The Czech supercomputer Salomon is leaving the data room of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, for good. At its launch, the supercomputer was ranked 40th on the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. During its operation, it performed more than 8.7 million computational tasks across 1,085 research projects in areas such as materials science, life sciences and engineering. These jobs consumed 1,024 million core hours of computing time.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has been involved in the EVEREST project, funded by the Horizon 2020 program, for the past three and a half years. The project, which brought together ten partners from industry, industrial research laboratories, and academia across six European countries – announces the first public release of its open-source System Development Kit (EVEREST SDK). The EVEREST SDK integrates tools to simplify the deployment of applications on heterogeneous high-performance cloud infrastructure, especially for environments offering FPGA acceleration.

Luxembourg, 14 February 2024 – The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has announced a tender for the installation of a new quantum computer LUMI-Q, which will be located in the Czech Republic and integrated with the supercomputer KAROLINA. The National Supercomputing Center IT4Innovations, which is part of the VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, will thus become the home of the first Czech quantum computer.

The world's ocean covers an area that represents almost 71% of the planet's surface and is home to a wealth of plant and animal species. Although the Czech Republic is a landlocked country with no access to any of the oceans, this does not mean that it cannot contribute to their exploration. Scientists from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center have joined the DTO-BioFlow project, which will collect previously unavailable or difficult-to-access marine biodiversity data and integrate it into the biodiversity component of the Digital Twin Ocean.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center became a member of the iRODS Consortium in 2023, joining such names as BAYER, DDN, Fujifilm and others. The consortium brings together businesses, research organisations, universities, and government agencies from around the world to ensure the sustainability of the iRODS software as a solution for distributed storage, transfer, and management of data. Members cooperate with the consortium to guide further development and innovation, expand its user and developer communities, and provide adequate support and educational resources.

Virtualisation of railway conditions and implementation of test rides in a laboratory environment. The software simulator, developed by National Supercomputing Center IT4Innovations, is designed to perform all of this and is a key component for the development of a functional sample of a detection system capable of detecting potential obstacles during the train's operation, thus contributing significantly to safer railway operation.

The international EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) initiative is expanding to the Czech Republic. It will connect existing scientific communities and create a system for storing and sharing data. Moreover, it will facilitate the research data access for scientists and scientific organisations. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic has just approved funding for the "IPs EOSC-CZ" project in Czechia. And it has officially launched its active phase on Monday, 4 September 2023.

The hosting agreement was signed in Luxembourg for the acquisition and operation of a quantum computer by the international LUMI-Q consortium. It will be installed at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava, Czechia, in 2024 and become the first Czech quantum computer, which will also be available to the European research community.    

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.

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.

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.

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.

The world's third most powerful and Europe's number one supercomputer is fully operational and accepted as of February 2023. The second pilot phase of the LUMI supercomputer with the GPU partition has been completed. LUMI is now officially ready to fully serve the European as well as the Czech scientific community.