Content about Europe

Professor Stephan Roche of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Spain is one of the early adopters of high-performance computing in Europe’s Graphene Flagship initiative. His latest project has received 22 million core hours from PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe. 

Roche has fifteen years of experience in developing novel algorithms and computational approaches that can be used to investigate quantum transporting in complex materials such as graphene. Here, we speak to him about his experience of working with PRACE.

Physicists can tell the future — or at least foresee multiple possible versions of it. They do this through computer simulations. Simulations can help scientists predict what will happen when a particular kind of particle hits a particular kind of material in a particle detector. But physicists are not the only scientists interested in predicting how particles and other matter will interact. This information is critical in multiple fields, especially those concerned about the effects of radiation. Physicists and other scientists use the GEANT4 toolkit to identify problems before they occur.

Last month, the Distributed Research Infrastructure for Hydro-Meteorology project (DRIHM) held its second summer school. The event brought together hydrometeorologists from 23 different countries, who learned about the latest computational approaches to critical hydrometeorological events, such as flash floods and thunderstorms.

Last month, iSGTW attended the EUDAT Third Conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. EUDAT is facilitating efficient research by contributing towards a collaborative data infrastructure in Europe. This will enable researchers to share data easily both within and between communities. It will also facilitate preservation of research data.

"The longer we wait, the more complex it becomes to solve the challenges around building the collaborative data infrastructure," says Kimmo Koski, managing director of Finland’s IT Center for Science (CSC), which is the organization coordinating the EUDAT project. "The time has come to do this now: Today’s global economic situation highlights the need for broad collaboration to solve these challenges."

The popular ISC Cloud and ISC Big Data events are being held this week in Heidelberg, Germany. Follow iSGTW on social media for highlights from the events and read our in-depth interviews with top speakers.

Monday 29 September marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, otherwise known as CERN, located near Geneva, Switzerland. A new book, entitled 'From Physics to Daily Life', highlights some of the many ways in which technology developed at CERN has impacted upon society at large.

Bob Jones, the head CERN openlab, writes in this book about the growth of distributed computing and the vital role this technology plays across a wide range of academic fields and business sectors.

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is set to hold its Fourth Plenary Meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on 22-24 September. The event will showcase the first concrete outputs from several of the organization's working groups. Many exciting co-located events are also scheduled to take place, including The Third EUDAT Conference.

The latest European Grid Infrastructure case study describes how researchers in The Netherlands have used the e-BioInfra Gateway to analyze brain scans from NATO soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. The team discovered that combat stress impairs cognition by affecting the midbrain and its link with the prefrontal cortex. While this effect was found to be largely reversible, it is thought that it could have an impact on the soldiers’ future social and cognitive functions.

iSGTW speaks to Michael Resch, director of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) in Germany, ahead of his keynote speech at next month’s ISC Cloud ’14 conference.

Resch explains why cloud offers a new way of providing access to computing resources and speaks of his drive to ensure that research doesn’t just end up in journal papers, but in your everyday life.

The newly launched European Ontology Network (EUON) will be holding its first ever workshop on 25 September 2014 as part of the EUDAT 3rd Conference in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. iSGTW speaks to EUON co-chairs James Malone and Yann Le Franc to find out more about the network.