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.