NEWS
GENCI, CEA,
CPU and Atos
arm European
scientists
against
COVID-19 with
HPC facilities
Digital experts heed Coronavirus
call to join Scottish Tech Army
Two of the most powerful supercomputers
in France, Joliot–Curie, operated at the
CEA’s supercomputing centre (TGCC), and
Occigen, operated at CPU’s supercomputing
centre (CINES), are providing urgent
computing access to large computer
resources to European research teams
involved in the fight against COVID-19. The
aim is to perform epidemiological studies
of COVID-19 virus spread, understand its
molecular structure and behaviour and
massively screen and test potential future
molecules, to accelerate the search for an
effective vaccine and support the global
fight against the virus. Both supercomputers
are based on Atos’ BullSequana platform, a
global leader in Digital Transformation. After
only a few weeks of GENCI’s COVID-19 fasttrack
access, GENCI, the French national highperformance
computing agency, announced
that there are now more than 20 scientifically
diverse COVID-19 projects running on its
three national supercomputers among which
are Joliot–Curie and Occigen (together with
Jean Zay at IDRIS), with the dedicated help of
support teams in these centres.
Joliot–Curie at TGCC
Joliot–Curie, with its 22 petaflop/s, is the most
powerful supercomputer in France dedicated
to academic and industrial open research.
Occigen at CINES
Among the COVID-19 related projects on
Occigen, researchers are running simulations
to study the SARS-Cov-2 helicase enzymes in
further detail, in order to better understand
the genetic make-up of the virus.
The platform will link technically skilled
volunteers to critical Coronavirus projects
Scotland’s talented software
development community is poised to
join the fight against COVID-19 thanks
to a new community platform that will
link technically skilled volunteers to critical
Coronavirus projects.
The Scottish Tech Army will tap into
the talents of tech sector experts who
are already saving lives by staying at
home but who can’t work for their
companies because they’ve been
furloughed under the UK Government’s
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme or
may have already lost their jobs due to
the market downturn.
Instead, their skills and experience
will now be harnessed to support
public sector organisations that are
developing digital projects to help
tackle the outbreak of the virus and the
management of the recovery process.
CivTech, the Scottish Government
programme that uses digital
technology to allow smoother access to
public services, will play a central role in
finding COVID-19-related projects that
require help.
The Scottish Tech Army will then work
with recruitment firms and senior figures
from within the digital technology
community to find volunteers with the
right skills to solve those problems.
Many hundreds of companies and
organisations have already offered their
support to the Scottish government in the
form of products and services they are
willing to provide on a pro-bono basis.
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