Video: Basque Science Foundation Anniversary

Ikerbasque 5 years from Ikerbasque on Vimeo.

The video is multilingual -although presented in English-, so this will give you a clue about how is it living in the Basque Country. Really Cool.

Online talk: Flow control in the presence of shocks

This one hour presentation was given by the director of the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics Enrique Zuazua.

Prof Zuazua who is also the scientific director was invited by prestigious NPL laboratory in the UK.

The Basque Center for Applied Mathematics is a world-class interdisciplinary research center on Applied Mathematics. The center is participating in relevant High Performance Computing projects and started operations in September 2008. It is located in Bilbao, Basque Country.

Energy and High Performance Computing Conference

In March 2012, the Basque cooperative research center, CIC Energigune, will host in Vitoria-Gasteiz the conference "Power our Future 2012". This two day conference is a perfect opportunity to visit a world class research place focused in Energy Research and also to visit the Basque Country -an historically active industry and research european hub.

One of the key areas of this centre is simulation and high performance computing in energy related areas. This talk will be a fantastic opportunity to discuss relevant aspects of the simulations with world class scientist like Bor-Yann Liaw or Petr Novak and many other leaders and corporations. "Topics will include new battery designs, emerging technologies, battery materials, power management, charging and testing systems, battery health, as well as the latest market trends affecting the industry".

Visit their website and register early to learn from the leaders!

The Basque Country is located in southern europe, an increasingly international research hub which is attracting world class talent. Scientific output grew by 10% in 2011 in comparison with 2010, pushed by a generous public and private funding.

CIC Energigune from Sonora Estudios on Vimeo.

Ángel Rubio Appointed External Director of Max Planck Society's Fritz Haber Institute

As indicated and covered by numerous media, Angel Rubio a top researcher based at the University of the Basque Country has been appointed external director of Max Planck.

Professor Rubio is one of Europe's biggest HPC users accessing Petaflop resources across numerous world leading research institutions. His team is based in young and attractive city of San Sebastian where the team hosts numerous computing platforms and actively develop world class scientific code. And they are hiring!

Once again, congratulations Prof Rubio!

How is it to live in the Basque Country ? Vitoria-Gasteiz

Vitoria-Gasteiz is the capital of the Basque Country in southern Europe. The city includes major researchers and industry in high performance computing, particularly applied to aeronautics&space, automovile and energy.

Vitoria-Gasteiz is also the European Green Capital in 2012. Find out why,

Opinion: A bad strategy for i2basque

Today we have known that i2Basque academic computing centre is giving away 20% of its computing power just for joining the spanish supercomputing network.

I suggested -me personally- that this was not the right way to go a few months back. Why ? because it is adopting the old-fashion supercomputing scheme of submit-application, four months to run and a fill out the forms again. Ah! and cite us in your paper (?). A bunch of senseless paperwork for academics who want to do research not paperwork.

I am sorry to say, serious researchers need more than 4 months. Just compiling on a new architecture is a nightmare -it is not the same ppc than intel than bluegene. Accounting for compute hours will never be precise. And having a system fragmented to bring some users from one site to another, where the support teams are not close to them is another huge mistake. Users want to be close to the technicians, visit them, see them interact as much as possible. They dont want to travel hours to bring their data, or work with a guy who is help them compile. That does not work, it is not efficient. But it is politically correct as this adds up to the petaflops that somebody claims to manage. False. It only creates a 'network' of scientists wasting money on trains, planes and buses and hotels. Great.

There is an obvious reason to this. The previous team who managed i2basque has been politically rebuilt in order to join a strategy which is not theirs. That cluster, the one they are going to split, is 95% full already, and that only using it for our own existing projects. The politics who decided that i2basque was going to be part of that network they do it just to show off, but it probably does not take into account the users. Unfortunately the new i2basque is being out-computed to favour other alternatives external to our scientists. People who do not want a real grid and free to compete network. Hey but that is the old supercomputing lobby.

Hopefully a new local government will change things when the elections come.

Disclaimer: This just represents my opinion and nobody else's. I am not linked to any of these organizations.

Radiopharmaceuticals for the Industry

Basque research centre Biomagune, and radiopharmaceutical firm Molypharma have signed an strategic cooperation agreement. Radiopharmacology is extremely important for instance in human race's war against cancer.

Radiopharmaceuticals use of high performance computing resources consists on advanced and large datasets imaging amongst others. Biomagune is a European leader on the application of these technologies to real life problem-solving.

Picture by Biomagune.

Did you know that ... ?

Basque multinational engineering firm Sener, created 52 years ago(!) the CAD/CAM/CAE software system known as FORAN used in the design and production of ships and offshore platforms. The System was conceived by SENER’s co-founder, José Manuel de Sendagorta, and it is one of the most widely used naval construction programmes in the world: used by 130 shipyards in 30 countries.

This extreme piece of high performance computing software works "As an integral part of the enterprise IT infrastructure, FORAN offers the possibility of expanding ship design and engineering data throughout the organization, by interfacing with existing legacy software, PLM, ERP and MM systems, FEM structural analysis tools and other specific CAE applications."

Here some screenshots from Sener:

CERN Accelerator School was in Bilbao, Basque Country

CERN Accelerator School took place in Bilbao during May 2011. The school attracted 100 scientists from around the world and lasted 10 days. ESS Bilbao was the local organising committee.

The importance of simulation and data analysis on today's High Power Hadron Machines is crucial without any doubt. That is one of the reasons why basque scientific and technological firms attracted the attention of the school.

Bilbao is also a high quality congress destination. Amongst its strengths, we would like to highlight personal safety and high quality tourism. In comparison with other mediterranean cities, Bilbao and the Basque Country are extremely safe. The region is well connected with other European cities and Trans-Oceanic links and provides a unique country side and high quality cultural destinations for visiting after, during and before. Many other international conferences are relocating to Bilbao and other Basque cities.

CERN Accelerator School in Bilbao

European Space Agency astronaut to give a talk in Bilbao

Pedro Duque will talk about forecasts and planning for the possible impact of asteroid Apophis with earth. As we know high performance computing is being used in multiple labs to predict how much 'explosive power it would take to destroy or sidetrack an asteroid that's got Earth in its cross-hairs'.

The following video is from Sandia Labs and simulates the impact asteroid Tunguska.

The event is sponsored by basque institutions and GE.

International Particle Accelerator Conference in San Sebastian Basque Country

This 2011 world class conference will be held in San Sebastian-Donostia, cultural capital of the Basque Country. This conference will get together 1,200 scientist and industry partners from around the world from the 4th to the 7th of September 2011.

It will be held at the Kursaal Palace and it will include sessions on Code Developments and Simulation Techniques and Applications of Accelerators. High profile computational scientist are expected to attend to this world class conference which includes not only a scientific exhibition but also an industry exhibition with multiple high profile computational firms like National Instruments, Integrated Engineering Software, Thales, Research Instruments or Computer Simulation Technology.

Basque laboratory ESS-Bilbao is part of the organising committee.

Picture by Flickr' Vautrin Baires

50m€ Venture Capital for Energy Startups

Gamesa, a basque Wind energy firm, has recently launched a corporate venture capital fund.

The 6 key areas for this fund are:

• wave (converting tidal currents and waves into energy);
• next generation photovoltaic energy (converting the sun's photonic energy into electricity);
• energy storage designed to guarantee high-quality supply;
• green mobility (electric vehicles);
• energy efficiency (maximising energy use while minimising consumption);
• and off-grid (small renewable generation units that are not connected to power grids, for use in remote locations).

Further information, please contact Gamesa site.

Gamesa received the visits of president Obama in 2008 and recently in April 2011. Here is the white house video of the last visit:

Max Planck Meteorology Institute Director in Bilbao, Basque Country

Klaus Hasselmann, director of the Max Planck Metereology Institute and ex-director of the German High Performance Computing Centre DKRZ gave a talk in Bilbao at the Basque Climate Change Centre in the context of the KlimaGune Workshop. This workshop aims to Address the Climate Change through Adaptation and is in line with a prominent and successful Basque Research Ecosystem.

The slides of the talk from a very interesting and humble pioneer of advanced high performance computing here.

Send us your stories!

Any person with any documented information regarding the Basque HPC ecosystem, is very welcome to send us his/her story. We would like to hear about everyone and we would like to publish it here.

The story must be written in English, and must use a nickname so the readers can identify your posts and we can credit your published work! Please send your stories via a private message to us on Linkedin through our group or to our Twitter account.

Thank you!!

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This blog, this twitter and this linkedin group are not affiliated with any institution private or public from the Basque Country or others. This online community is made by people that live and work in and for the Basque Country, and as such they have their on responsibilities, jobs and careers, and they use their spare time to write here about an important, small, humble and highly advanced community of high performance computing -industrial and public research- users (aka in marketing as supercomputing). This community is non for profit and it is completely anonymous.

We do not represent any of them and all the information published is based in publicly available web sites, reports or research publications, plus our own individual and anonymously published thoughts on the subject.

Bilbao, the city -Why should your HPC project be in the Basque Country?

Today's video is Basque Country's biggest city: Bilbao



This video was played at the Shangai's Exhibition.

Bilbao Web Summit - Semantic Knowledge Conference at the Semantic Valley

Join Tim Berners-Lee, W3C, Guidewire Group, BBVA, Boein, BlackBerry, PWC, NASA, Garrigues amongst other knowledge leaders at the Bilbao Web Summit this May 17th to 18th in Bilbao, Basque Country

Mountain Bike and Outdoors - Why should your HPC project be in the Basque

The Basque country offers incredible MTB opportunities for everyone! Beautiful landscapes between the greenest mountains covered in Oak trees and other local varieties and the beautiful Cantabric sea. In the Basque you can cycle and have a swim on the sea after work and finish your day having an amazing dinner at the local towns.

The following video is from a local company suited for non spanish speakers which organizes MTB routes, hiking routes and cultural trips around the gorgeous Basque landscape. If your team is into outdoors activities, the Basque Country is the place!

More Mountain Biking Videos

via blog.aboutbc.info

More on Jobs: Seniors, Postdocs and Phds on Computational Jobs

Some of them are ERC calls. Areas of expertise:

• Analysis of Partial Differential Equations

• Waves in continuous and discrete media

• Numerical analysis

• Optimal design and control problems

• Applications in Aerodynamics

• Data Mining

• Statistics and Applied Probability

• Financial Mathematics

• Partial Differential Equations, Numerics and Control (PDE)

• Computational Mathematics(CM)

• Network Design,Analysis and Optimization (NET)

• Calculus of Variations and Elasticity (CVE)

• Mathematical Biology and Molecular Simulation(MBMS)

In the Basque country's center for Mathematics.

All the information and application details here (follow the link do not email me!).

top500 bubble burst

The bubble is bursting, that is for sure. We are facing a tremendous downturn. Governments are making cuts and cuts. And I shall remember that many countries in very difficult situations have stop announcing new speed improvements/new machines/etc.

It makes sense. Jack Dongarra states that he would not like to make policy based on only one number. He is right. Unfortunately much of the spanish science policy has been exactly that: THAT number for the last years and for a lot of another number : €s. That policy in which infrastructure accumulation equals science output. That childish behaviour in which more high--end and future computing commodities mean better. That kiddies behaviour by which I have more I rule my micro-world. Probably FALSE. Probably it is a cultural problem rather than a rigorous science policy.

This is exactly the point that is different on the Basque Science and Industry System -IMHO. The Basque Country is using HPC in a more modest and strategic way. That is a way that is not in the lists, and it does not mind.

Ey! but that is my humble opinion. Worst case is 'someone' will 'pull some strings' to knock this 'stupid' blog-writer down. If they are not ready to read this, then they are not ready to dictate science. I feel sorry that other regions in Spain have wasted my taxes on more rather than better.