The 17th Call for Proposals for PRACE Project Access received 60 eligible proposals, of which 42 were awarded a total of 1.7 thousand million core hours. This brings the total number of Project Access proposals awarded to 652 since 2010 and the total amount of computing time awarded by PRACE to date above 19 thousand million core hours.
In addition to resources being awarded, five proposals have received additional support from High Level Support Teams (HLSTs) as part of the PRACE 2 Programme. The assistance provided will contribute to improving the efficiency of the awarded projects in the usage of PRACE resources.
The 42 awarded proposals are led by principal investigators from 12 different European countries. In addition, these proposals involve collaborators from Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.
Among the newly awarded proposals, seven scientific domains are represented: 5 proposals are linked to the fields of Biochemistry, Bioinformatics and Life Sciences; 10 to Chemical Sciences and Materials; 2 to Earth System Sciences; 11 to Engineering; 4 to Fundamental Constituents of Matter; 1 to Mathematics and Computer Sciences; and 9 to Universe Sciences.
Two proposals investigating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease were awarded. Targeting Alzheimer’s-associated Amyloid-beta using Small Molecules will be led by Prof. Michele Vendruscolo from the University of Cambridge and was awarded 28 million core hours on MareNostrum@BSC, Spain. Realistic Cerebellar Multi-scale Network Reconstruction will be led by Prof. Egidio D’Angelo from The University of Pavia and was awarded 30 million core hours on Joliot Curie-KNL@GENCI, France. PRACE is delighted to support such projects with expected high impact on societal challenges.
Resources were awarded to two proposals that include collaborators from SMEs. SODust – Scattering Simulations of Oriented Large Dust Particles will be led by Dr. Vassilis Amiridis from the National Observatory of Athens and involve the participation of Raymetrics SA, an aerosol LIDAR company based in Greece. This proposal was awarded 35 million core hours on MareNostrum@BSC, Spain and will investigate the scattering properties of large, irregularly-shaped desert dust particles, oriented due to triboelectrification processes within dust clouds. TopBridge – Topology Optimization of Bridge Girders in Cable Supported Bridges will be led by Prof. Ole Sigmund from the Technical University of Denmark and has the international consulting group COWI A/S, based in Denmark, as a collaborator. This project was awarded 15 million core ours on Joliot Curie-SKL@GENCI, France and aims to use HPC to push next generation bridge design into an era with sustainable and lighter bridge girders and increased lifespans.
Overall, the 17th PRACE Call for Proposals awarded resources to Principal Investigators whose work is funded by the following: ERC Advanced Grant (3), ERC Starting Grant (1), ERC Consolidator Grant (4), COST Action (2), and Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowship (4). In addition, resources were also awarded to Principal Investigators involved in H2020 (5), FP7 (1) and EC FET Flagship (3) projects.
All information and the abstracts of the projects awarded under the 17th PRACE Call for Proposals can be found here.
This article was first published on www.prace-ri.eu on Monday 24 September 2018.
