NEWS

More than half of the Earth's population already lives in urban areas, and they are growing faster than ever before. Researchers at IT4Innovations, in collaboration with the University of Leeds in the UK, have trained a neural network to recognise how cities are changing over the decades, using remote sensing data from the European Space Agency (ESA). The aim of this collaboration is to create useful models that will be available to urban planners. Monitoring urban sprawl will help them to prevent unwanted urban expansion and minimise negative environmental impacts.

In September, the pan-European OpenWebSearch.EU project was launched, bringing together 14 renowned European research and supercomputing centres to create an open European web search infrastructure. The Czech Republic is represented in the project by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava.

Our supercomputer center participated again this year in Researchers' Night, our most popular public event. The event, when hundreds of science departments open their doors in the evening, took place on Friday, 30 September, and the theme was With All the Senses. We welcomed record 900 visitors at IT4Innovations. 

The European Joint Undertaking EuroHPC has selected sites to host new European quantum computers. LUMI-Q consortium is among the projects chosen, and its quantum computer will be located in Czechia at the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Centre in Ostrava.

A dozen programmers from around the world got together in early September to join forces in order to develop software called FIJI. The hackathon, a gathering of developers known in the IT community, was initiated by researchers from IT4Innovations, who have been working on a specialized image processing software package for a long time.

A cheap, effective, and recyclable nanomaterial that can not only detect but also eradicate heavy metals from water, especially cadmium and lead. This is the result of a collaboration between scientists from CATRIN at Palacký University, VSB-TUO and IT4Innovations, and the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in Barcelona.

In Prague, the International Conference on Domain Decomposition Methods (DD27) brought together world leaders in the field that combines numerical mathematics with the world of powerful supercomputers. Thanks to domain decomposition algorithms, these computers can be used to solve very large-scale simulation problems in scientific and engineering practice, for example, prediction of aerodynamic properties of aircraft and cars, strength calculations of large-scale engineering and building structures, as well as detailed models predicting climate evolution or simulating various bodily functions.

Ostrava, 15th July – Europe's top research infrastructures have come together in the newly launched BioDT project to jointly design and develop a digital twin prototype for biodiversity research and analysis to support the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Scientists from IT4Innovations, the Czech National Supercomputing Center, are also involved in this unique project.

Ostrava, 14th July 2022 – Scientists at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center are developing a specialised software package that will make the study of proteins easier and faster. The advanced research opens up new possibilities for developing cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union began a few days ago, and with it, the first accompanying events related to this prestigious role. One of them is the traditional visit of ambassadors sitting on the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the Council of the EU, which is taking place in the Moravian-Silesian Region from 7th to 9th July.

13th June 2022, Kajaani, Finland – The LUMI supercomputer is the first pre-exascale supercomputer of the pan-European EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and is now also the most powerful supercomputer in Europe. Its inauguration ceremony took place on Monday 13th June 2022 in Kajaani, Finland. LUMI offers European researchers a world-class tool for understanding complex phenomena such as climate change and applications of artificial intelligence, while also serving as a platform for international research cooperation. IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, is also involved in its construction and operation. Czech scientists thus have access to this unique supercomputer through the services provided by the e-INFRA CZ research infrastructure, of which IT4Innovations is a part. 

The HPCSE 2022 conference, organised by IT4Innovations in May, brought together experts from HPC and related scientific disciplines. Andreas Lintermann, who has been working for a long time at the supercomputing centre in Jülich, Germany, and who is coordinating the European Centre of Excellence for Exascale Computing "Research on AI - and Simulation-Based Engineering at Exascale" (CoE RAISE) since 2021, accepted the invitation to present his work activities. We interviewed Andreas on this occasion to present an interview with him in the following lines.

One of the largest HPC conference - ISC 2022 - took place in Germany. IT4Innovations was also among the exhibitors, presenting the Ostrava supercomputing centre and its activities at its own booth.

Hamburg, 30th May 2022 – Its name is LUMI and is installed in Kajaani, Finland. Only a third of it is operational, but even this, with a peak performance of 151.9 PFlop/s, has earned it third place in the ranking of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and even gold in Europe. We are talking about the long-awaited European supercomputer star - the LUMI supercomputer. It offers part of its computational resources to the scientific community in the Czech Republic thanks to the membership of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, which is part of VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, in the consortium building this supercomputer.

Nearly 80 participants, 30 lectures, 11 invited speakers from six countries, and 30 presented posters. This is the balance of the four-day HPCSE 2022 conference, which took place from 16th to 20th May at the Hotel Soláň in the Beskydy mountains. The conference organized by IT4Innovations was held for the fifth time, but this time after a three-year break caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Monday, 25th April, we welcomed Helena Langšádlová, who has been the Minister of Science, Research, and Innovation since last December. She visited IT4Innovations during her business trip to Ostrava, where she held a series of meetings with representatives of local universities.

This spring, we have endowed ourselves with a brand-new seminar room, which is a representative place for conducting training, seminars, classes, and other events organized by IT4Innovations. The classroom, which can accommodate up to 37 people, including speakers, is equipped with state-of-the-art audio-visual technology that allows, among others, live streaming.

Ostrava, 13th April 2022 – Data room of IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava boasts not only supercomputers but also high-capacity data storage facilities. The first one is the PROJECT storage, which significantly facilitates the work of researchers who calculate their projects on the Ostrava supercomputers. In the second case, it is the data storage facility of the CESNET association, which is one of the largest in the Czech Republic.

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.

Great teamwork, clear communication of scientific results, and active writing of blog articles. These are the reasons why the jury of the international PRACE Summer of HPC Awards awarded Jenay Patel and Carola Ciaramelletti for their work on a project mentored by colleagues from IT4Innovations.