NEWS

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.

The 23nd PRACE Call for Proposals for Project Access is open till April 27, 2021. The allocation of awarded resources on Tier-0 systems is made for 1 year at a time with its utilization starting on October 1, 2021.

Applicants can apply for a 12-month plan (Single-year Project) or a 24 or 36-month plan (Multi-year Project).

The DICE Calls for Service Requests aim to encourage European researchers to take advantage of a set of digital storage services being made available free of charge by the European Commission. The offering includes a broad spectrum of services ranging from the familiar “personal drive storage” for individuals and small teams up to extremely sophisticated value-added facilities for long-term preservation, identification, metadata curation, and implementation of FAIR principles for data-intensive research projects. In addition, the DICE project has defined a simple and efficient process to minimize the time to service acquisition, reducing it in some cases to days.

At the end of last year, IT4Innovations launched the Visualization and Virtual Reality Lab (VVR Lab), which will support the supercomputing infrastructure, and is to be used to visualize 3D content using the latest available technology in large-scale 3D projection and virtual reality devices. Among other roles, the lab will support in-house research carried out at IT4Innovations and at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava.

Find out what happened at IT4Innovations in the 4th quarter of 2020. You can find the new Newsletter HERE.

After seven years, the Anselm supercomputer is leaving IT4Innovations. During its operation, its computational resources were available to Czech as well as foreign scientists, and more than 2.6 million computing jobs were run on it within 725 research projects in fields such as material sciences, computational chemistry, biosciences, and engineering. It will find its further application as part of the World of Civilization exhibition installed in the Dolní Vítkovice area.

Anselm, thank you for all your years of service and now you go and enjoy your hard-earned retirement in Dolní Vítkovice.

Institutions can apply for computational resources within Open Access Grant Competitions. The grant competition is announced 3 times a year (February, June, October) for employees of research, scientific and educational organizations.

Vít Vondrák, the current Managing Director of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, has been reappointed to his post for another term. This will be of the same length as the previous one, i.e. for 3 years. In this interview we discuss what he achieved in his first term as the IT4Innovations Managing Director, and what plans he has for his next term.

In early 2020, the Digital Innovation Hub Ostrava (DIH Ostrava) was established, bringing together the activities of IT4In - novations and MSIC Ostrava, enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to examine and potentially address their digitalisation needs. These, unlike large companies, tend not to have the financial or human resources to commit to verifying and potentially deploying digital technologies. For this reason, the Moravian-Silesian Region also decided to support the foundation of DIH Ostrava, including a pilot financial advantage tool for selected types of services and access to supercomputing capacities.

IT4Innovations cooperates with the ENET centre, which is part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, in the Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies (CEET) project. The project is supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, which financially supports research and innovation.