EU: Researchers given early access to supercomputer

Competition is fierce among researchers for some precious time on the fastest supercomputer in Europe available for public research, the European Union's JUGENE. Last week 10 European research teams were granted more than 320 million core working hours on the computer collectively as part of an early access call for proposals.

The teams come from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK, for projects ranging from molecular dynamics to astrophysics, earth sciences to engineering.

Access to the high-end tier-0 JUGENE, located in Germany, is controlled by the pan-European High Performance Computing Service, under the direction of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), which said: "Supercomputers are indispensable tools for solving the most challenging and complex scientific and technological problems through simulations."

PRACE is partly funded by the European Commission's seventh framework programme. It received 68 proposals asking for more than 1.8 billion hours of work time on the machine. Winning projects were selected for their "high level of scientific and technical maturity, demonstrated need for tier-0 resources, and the fact that they will able to achieve significant scientific results within the initial grant period of four months".

Collaborators and researchers from 31 universities and 12 research institutions are involved in the 10 projects.

Supercomputers are an important part of research methods, particularly for research areas such as astrophysics and engineering which require incredibly complicated maths to complete their findings.

Innovation in the energy sector was a key topic among the winning projects, including 24.6 million hours for Jochen Blumberger's research on electron transport in organic solar cells at University College London in the UK. The research could improve the efficiency of organic solar cells, which are a promising alternative to currently widespread silicon-based solar cells.

The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany was also awarded 50 million core hours on the computer to study plasma turbulence, which could directly contribute to the advent of nuclear fusion, the key to infinitely more efficient nuclear power in the future.

Other scientists will look to the skies for their research. Peter Coveney, also at University College London, will be studying turbulent liquids, which could have a major impact on understanding weather patterns, dispersion of pollutants and more efficient gas flows in vehicles. Harmen Jonker of Delft University in the Netherlands will study the properties of atmospheric boundaries, which could result in much more accurate weather and climate models.

Zoltán Fodor of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in Germany will go even further into the skies with his research on the properties of matter, studying how infinitesimally small particles in the universe, such as quarks and gluons, combined at the beginning of time to form protons and neutrons which came together to form atomic nuclei.

The first open call for one-year project access closes on 15 August, with successful projects starting research on 1 November 2010. Click here for more information about the call.