The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) publishes the fourth edition of its Scientific and Innovation Case, outlining the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for Scientific Computing in Europe.
Scientific Computing underpins a vast array of research fields that encompass an ever-growing range of complex problems, amplified by a rapidly changing world. European competitiveness is driven by scientific excellence, which requires significant cooperation as well as infrastructure and investment from both public and private sectors. Significant investments in Europe’s supercomputing platforms have resulted in pre-exascale and exascale systems, open to all those who aim to find solutions to those grand challenges.
Published on 29 April 2026, the fourth edition of the PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case charts the progress achieved in several key branches of science that rely on High-Performance Computing (HPC), outlining the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as well as highlighting the success and leadership of European scientists tackling them.
For the first time, the PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case includes a specific chapter on Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing.
“Artificial intelligence and quantum computing have both triggered paradigm shifts, and a global race between research institutions, governments, and the private sector, that nobody can ignore,” Prof. Constantia Alexandrou, Chair of the PRACE Council. “Harnessing the power of AI as well as developing a fault-tolerant quantum computer should be high on the agenda of public research funding, to preserve scientific independence and promote technological innovation. At the same time, it is crucial for Europe to maintain its competitiveness in simulation-based science by providing increased and diverse computational resources.”
The PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case also highlights one of the currently most apt examples of the impact and importance of Scientific Computing: the creation of so-called ‘digital twins’: in silico replicas of complex systems, which offer a degree of flexibility that experimental observations cannot reach.
“Digital twins are powerful tools for obtaining an in-depth understanding by evaluating “What if” scenarios, offering a degree of flexibility that is impossible to gain through experimental observations performed on the actual system of interest. They are particularly relevant to climate research, life sciences and human health, as well as advanced materials sciences,” says Prof. Hartmut Wittig, Editor-in-Chief of the PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC in Europe 2026-2034.
About the publication
The PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case is a landmark publication of PRACE as the Association of Users and HPC Centres, collecting and amplifying the voices of those who work directly with Europe’s world-class supercomputing resources. Each chapter focusses on a different scientific domain, showing the enormous variety in methodologies and hardware used. From those domain-specific analyses, a set of cross-domain recommendations is derived, which will speak to both scientific and political decision-makers.
The fourth edition of the PRACE Science and Innovation Case continues a tradition established by the HPC in Europe Taskforce (HET) and supports the vision that European infrastructure will enable high-impact scientific discovery as well as innovative engineering research and development across all disciplines in Europe.
Thanks to the high level of expertise and tireless commitment of the members of the editorial committee and the chairs and members of the panels, this publication provides an exciting overview of the achievements of computational science across various domains, including for the first time social sciences, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. It is an excellent advocate for the investments required for state-of-the-art scientific computing to bring further benefits to society. The PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC 2026-2034 can be read and downloaded here:
