NEWS

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).

The e-INFRA CZ consortium has achieved the highest possible score in the international evaluation of large research infrastructures in the Czech Republic, which took place under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic. The consortium consists of three independent infrastructures: CESNET, IT4Innovations and CERIT-SC. The evaluation highlighted, among other things, the progress made in merging these infrastructures and the resulting benefit of a unified access to services for users.

Karolina, the latest Czech supercomputer, located at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center in Ostrava, has reached the 15th place in the Green500 list, which evaluates the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world.

The e-INFRA CZ consortium has implemented quantum key distribution, which has reached primacy in many ways. Communication secured by encryption through quantum key distribution (QKD) represents a new shift in the field of communication security and addresses the risks associated with the advent of quantum computers, which brings with it the real danger of existing encryption methods being cracked more easily. This is the first national as well as international inter-city distribution of quantum keys in the Czech Republic, specifically to Cieszyn, Poland. The implementation of the distribution is the result of cooperation between CESNET and IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava and the Polish PSNC academic network. 

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.

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday life. Newly, it could also help in life-threatening events. Czech scientists, including those from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, are developing a voicebot that should be activated when emergency lines are extremely overloaded.

IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has joined the LIGATE project, which will use European supercomputing systems to improve computer-aided drug design. Ostrava's supercomputers will thus contribute their computing power, in rapid response to the global pandemic crisis.

The Karolina supercomputer located at IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center has ranked 69th in the TOP500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. With its two computing parts, Karolina has scored twice in the TOP500 list, namely 69th and 149th. In Europe it ranked 19th and in the Czech Republic it confirmed its dominant position as the most powerful Czech supercomputer.

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.