NEWS

The prize, which is intended for students and young scientists, was founded in 1994 by the eminent Czech mathematician Prof. Ivo Babuška. Our colleague from IT4Innovations Jakub Homola also scored points in the 2021 edition of the competition. The expert jury awarded his diploma thesis, in which he used Ostrava supercomputers.

In the past, allocated resources were requested, granted, and accounted in normalized core hours (NCH). NCH used a factor different for each cluster and type of nodes.  

With progressing time, the system of NCH has become obsolete, since we now have clusters that greatly vary in computing capacity, i.e. CPU, GPU, memory, and determining the value of the resources of different clusters is a complex process that cannot be based on a single value.

Once the 40th most powerful supercomputer in the world computed its last computational task on Monday, 13th December. Six years after its commissioning, the era of the second supercomputer in Ostrava - the Salomon supercomputer - has come to an end.

Thousands of high-performance computing professionals met again at the international Supercomputing Conference SC21, which took place from 14th to 19th November in St. Louis, USA. IT4Innovations was also among the exhibitors at this supercomputing event.

Thirty scientists from two research institutes met on Thursday, 4th November, at IT4Innovations in Ostrava to present their research activities to each other and discuss the possibilities of mutual cooperation. The introductory workshop aimed to find synergies in the areas of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

A reliable, fast, cheap, and easy-to-use diagnostic method for assessing the quality of beef meat was developed by scientists from the Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute, CATRIN, of Palacký University in collaboration with colleagues from IT4Innovations, Spain and Brazil. By the method of electrochemical detection alongside using 2D graphene acid prepared in Olomouc, they can detect even small residues of pork meat in beef products. This is important when residues of pork are extremely undesirable for religious, cultural, but also health reasons. The results were published by the renowned journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

The last day of September was a great day for budding computer scientists. This year's Joseph Fourier Awards recognized the work of four young researchers, including our IT4Innovations colleague Martin Golasowski.

As in the previous years, this year our supercomputing centre took part in the Researcher's Night. The evening event, during which hundreds of scientific departments open their doors, took place on Friday 24th September. The main theme of this year's event was TIME. That is to say, a variable we have a lot to say about at IT4Innovations.

On Thursday, 23rd September 2021, a seminar to implement the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) initiative in the Czech Republic was organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, the National Library of Technology, the e-INFRA CZ large research infrastructure and the Technology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Recently, in a press release, we informed about the first realized intercity quantum key distribution link in the Czech Republic, which was launched on 1 July 2021 within the OPENQKD project. The link operates in the optical infrastructure of the Czech research network CESNET and Polish PSNC between the cities of Ostrava (CZE) and Cieszyn (POL).

On Saturday 17th July, we welcomed distinguished guests to IT4Innovations. Frans Timmermans himself came to see the plans and projects of the Moravian-Silesian Region. The second most important man in the European Union makes no secret of the fact that he sees the future in supercomputers. It is also for this reason why he chose our supercomputing centre for his meeting with Czech partners.

In January 2019, a project entitled ‘Research and Development of a Functional Sample of a Railway Vehicle Enabling Collection of Data and Software – a Simulator Enabling Generation of Data to Train Obstacle Detection under Simulated Conditions’ was launched at IT4Innovations in cooperation with the IXPERTA s.r.o. company. The main objective of the project is to develop a functional sample of a railway vehicle detecting obstacles in the driving profile. 

The first transparent luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) based on lead-free perovskite nanocrystals was developed by scientists from the Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute (CATRIN) in collaboration with colleagues from University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, Germany; Brno University of Technology;  and VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. The unique solution overcomes the disadvantages of the existing perovskite solar energy devices, namely the presence of lead and low stability.

On Friday 18th June 2021, the Minho Manifesto Declaration was discussed at the Minho University in Guimarães, Portugal. Its intention is to strengthen research linked to high-performance computing (HPC) and to link more closely the five supercomputing centres that newly boast petascale systems. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center will also be part of the emerging European network.

A theoretical study by computational chemists from Palacký University’s Czech Advanced Technology and Research Institute (CATRIN) provides new insights into understanding the mechanism behind the photoluminescence of carbon dots. This article was published by The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, which also selected a graphic by Martin Pykal (CATRIN) for the supplementary cover.

Pavel Hobza and his team are joining IT4Innovations. One of the most cited Czech scientists and the author of groundbreaking discoveries, he has devoted his entire scientific career to non-covalent interactions and drug design. However, he is no newcomer to the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center - he has been using the Ostrava supercomputers for a long time for extremely time-intensive computations related to the drug design. From now on, however, his work at IT4Innovations will be much more intensive.

Bonmedix is a company dedicated to providing a disease diagnosis service from retinal images for doctors and ophthalmological professionals (optometrists, nurses, and medical technicians). Last year, Bonmedix received support from the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR) for the project titled Development of an Expert System for Automatic Evaluation of Pathologies from Eye Images known by the acronym Viderize system, which involves IT4Innovations artificial intelligence experts.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has joined a new project that supports the development of European exascale systems. The SCALABLE project will drive innovation in European industries and support basic research through advanced methods of computational fluid dynamics.  

In mid-April, Michal Otyepka took up the position of the Head of the Modelling for Nanotechnologies Lab at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre. He will lead the teams focusing on the design of new materials, the development of special surfaces for nanooptics, and modelling and design of nanocomposites, boasting state-of-the-art equipment following the latest trends.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center conducts excellent research via national and international projects.  Quite unique is the success rate in being involved in projects in the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, where IT4Innovations currently features in 16 international projects, in one of which as the coordinator.