HPCE3 Visitors at PDC

In the previous edition of this newsletter , we announced that a new four-year-long transnational access project called HPC- Europa3 (or HPCE3) started on the 1st of May 2017  and that PDC is one of the ten main partners representing Sweden in this project. The project is based on a programme of visits, in the form of traditional transnational access, with researchers visiting high-performance computing (HPC) centres and/or scientific hosts. The visitors are funded for travel, accommodation and subsistence, and provided with an amount of computing time suitable for their approved project.

In this project PDC has committed to host about 40 visitors from all over the world, although prioritization will be given to visitors from the Baltic countries. The aim is to tighten the collaboration between the Baltic countries and Sweden, as well as to promote the use of HPC in the Baltic countries.

HPCE3 calls for applications are always open, however there are four cut-offs per year. Currently HPCE3 is accepting applications for the third cut-off that will end on the 28th of February 2018.

For the first call, HPCE3 received 70 applications, 52 of which were accepted. In the second call, HPCE3 received 22 applications and the results of the second call will be known in December. PDC received 4 applicants per call in both of these calls. The applicants were from Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Slovenia, Belarus, Switzerland, Serbia and Denmark.

Currently we are hosting our first visitor, Dr. Shannon Stauffer from the Center for Physical Sciences and Technology in Lithuania, who is collaborating with Prof. Natalia Skorodumova from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KTH. The duration of the visit is five weeks during which time they will be investigating the mixed metal NASICON for Na-ion battery electrodes by running Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP) simulations on Beskow at PDC.

The other three visitors who were accepted in the first call will be arriving at PDC in January 2018.

If you are involved in a collaborative project with researchers from any other country (especially with one of the Baltic countries) then HPCE3 is a unique opportunity for you to invite your collaborative partners to visit Sweden and enhance their research by using the supercomputer Beskow at PDC. HPCE3 will cover their travel and accommodation costs and also provide a modest subsistence allowance.