We mediate efficient utilisation of our leading national supercomputing infrastructure in order to increase the competitiveness and innovation of Czech science and industry. IT4Innovations primarily provides computational resources to researchers and academics from the Czech Republic within Open Access Grant Competitions. From 2013 to the end of 2023, 2.174 projects in various scientific fields, such as new materials and drug design, physics laws discovery, engineering problems, rendering, and scientific data visualisation, to projects addressing cybersecurity, advanced data analytics, and AI tasks, have received computational resources.
what do our supercomputers solve?
users of our supercomputers
Andrea Nedělníková
from VSB-TUO and CATRIN, Palacký University in Olomouc
„I once imagined my future in a laboratory; today I use computational chemistry as an atomic-scale ‘microscope’.
For me, a supercomputer is the bridge between equations and the behaviour of biomolecules.“
Debora Lančová
from the Institute of Physics
at the Silesian University in Opava
„For me, a supercomputer is like a laboratory that we cannot build on Earth, but can simulate instead. With its help, I model the flow of magnetised gas – plasma – in the immediate vicinity of black holes.“
Ivana Miháliková
from Matej Bel University
in Banská Bystrica and at the Slovak Academy of Sciences
“To me, a supercomputer is like a quantum computer simulator: I can safely test quantum algorithms on it before deploying them in the real quantum world.”
Martin Vrábel
z IT4Innovations
“For me, a supercomputer is like a time accelerator – what would normally take me months to solve, I can manage in a matter of days thanks to a supercomputer.”
Michael Komm
Institute of Plasma Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences
“The first and only supercomputer I ever visited was at IT4Innovations (IT4I) in Ostrava on the occasion of its commissioning. The IT4I building and the equipment of its data room left me with a very positive impression. Touring the data room in a reduced oxygen atmosphere was a bit of an adrenaline rush.”
Štěpán Sklenák
J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences
“I only started using supercomputers at IT4Innovations in Ostrava. However, in 1999, I saw the decommissioned CRAY supercomputer on display at a conference in Boulder, CO, USA, along with an exhibition about Cray's founder, Mr. Seymour Cray.”
Jiří Klimeš
Charles University in Prague
“I've been performing computations using IT4Innovations (IT4I) supercomputers nearly since their inception, with my very first application for computational resources being submitted in 2015 when the Salomon supercomputer was launched. A large part of our research needs to perform computationally intensive calculations. Without IT4I, the situation would have been much more difficult for me upon my return from abroad.”
Martin Friák
Institute of Physics of Materials of the Czech Academy of Sciences
“It is primarily Karolina and Barbora which help us immensely in our work. However, as we have been loyal and satisfied users of IT4Innovations for many years, we also used Anselm and Salomon when these systems were still in operation.
Karolina is helping us with simulations of quantum computers running in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA.”
Jakub Šístek
Institute of Mathematics of the Czech Academy of Sciences
“I have used the IT4I supercomputers rather continuously since the beginning of the centre.
I have done a lot of large-scale computations on Salomon, and together with my colleagues, we are currently heavily using Karolina for our research. We are looking forward to running our computations on LUMI in a few months.”
Martin Zelený
Brno University of Technology
“I have progressively used all supercomputers except NVIDIA DGX-2 in my work. Now, I am using Karolina and LUMI, without which quantum mechanical calculations are impossible. For these calculations, we use the VASP program.”
SELECTED PROJECTS FROM THE 36th OPEN ACCESS GRANT COMPETITION
Modelling of ELM transport in the ITER SOL
Call: 36th Open Access Grant Competition; OPEN-36-33
Researcher: Šimon Vrba
Institution: Czech Academy of Sciences
Field: Physics
Image: Left: a poloidal cross-section of the ITER tokamak vacuum vessel.
Right: the time evolution of deuterium ion temperature in the ITER SOL during the initial phase of ELM injection (simulation in progress).
Šimon Vrba from the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of Dr David Tskhakaya, focuses on kinetic simulations of the scrape-off layer (SOL) in tokamaks – devices used for controlled thermonuclear fusion. His research centres on extreme plasma bursts (so-called ELMs), which cause intense heat loads on the divertor and lead to material erosion, particularly of tungsten. This represents one of the key challenges for the long-term operation of future fusion reactors, such as the international ITER project in France.
The allocated computing time on the Karolina and Barbora NG supercomputers will be used by the team to carry out detailed kinetic simulations of these processes using the BIT1 code. The results will help to better predict heat fluxes, erosion, and tungsten transport in edge plasma – critical insights for the safe and efficient design of tokamaks and their operational scenarios.
The research contributes to the work packages of the EUROfusion consortium as well as to the activities of the ITER organisation, which bring together research institutions and laboratories focused on the development of fusion energy.
Peptides Controlling Membrane Curvature
Call: 36th Open Access Grant Competition; OPEN-36-41
Researcher: Robert Vácha
Institution: CEITEC, Masaryk University
Field: Life Sciences
Robert Vácha from CEITEC, Masaryk University, studies how peptides and proteins interact with cell membranes. Cell membranes are highly dynamic and constantly change shape. Their role is to protect the cell while separating its internal compartments from the surrounding environment. Some molecules recognise and prefer regions with a particular membrane shape (curvature), which can lead to their spontaneous organisation. Others, on the other hand, influence membrane curvature themselves, thereby altering its shape. These processes play a crucial role in, for example, the transport of substances into and out of the cell, cell division, cellular signaling, and viral infection.
Although these processes are essential for cell function, we still cannot reliably determine which proteins are sensitive to membrane curvature and which actively induce it. Moreover, we currently lack tools to deliberately modulate this capability. The research team will therefore utilise computational time on the LUMI supercomputer to perform molecular simulations, which will help design new peptides capable of recognising membrane curvature or generating it themselves. These findings could, in the future, contribute to the development of novel biotechnological and therapeutic tools.
The research is supported by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports’ Inter-Excellence programme within the project Peptides Controlling Membrane Curvature (LUC25012).
Sign language recognition, translation, and interpretability
Call: 36th Open Access Grant Competition; OPEN-36-19
Researcher: Marek Hrúz
Institution: University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
Field: Informatics
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Marek Hrúz from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen develops systems for the automatic recognition and translation of sign language, capable of interpreting hand gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. Together with his colleagues, he developed SignLLaVa, which maps visual features into representations of a large language model (Llama 3.1) and generates written translations. The team is now focusing on aligning sign languages with their spoken counterparts.
To train and test artificial intelligence that converts visual information into written or spoken language – while also enabling insight into how the system processes signs—the team has been awarded computing time on the LUMI supercomputer. Their main mission is to improve communication between sign language users and speakers of other languages, and to create technologies that enhance access to education, employment, and public services for the deaf community.
Reconstructing Quaternary mountain glaciation and palaeoclimate in Central Europe with the Parallel Ice Sheet Model
Call: 36th Open Access Grant Competition, OPEN-36-27
Researcher: Cristina-Ioana Balaban
Institution: Charles University in Prague
Field: Earth Sciences
Cristina-Ioana Balaban from Charles University will use the Karolina supercomputer to reconstruct Quaternary glaciation and paleoclimate in Central Europe. The project aims to determine the climate conditions under which glaciers formed, grew, and retreated, and how these conditions affected plants, animals, and humans in the mountains between the large Fennoscandian and Alpine ice sheets.
The research, supported by the Czech Science Foundation
(25-17976S) and involving researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), will help improve our understanding of past distributions of nature and humans, past climate changes, and will also support mountain conservation and public education.
Explore the full list of selected projects. →
Computational resources allocated within Open Access Grant Competitions by scientific disciplines [%]
Computational resources allocated within the Open Access Grant Competitions by institutions [%]
Publications with overview of our users' projects
