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.