Table of Contents
Statutes
The reference for the definition of PRACE purpose, activities and the fundamentals of its governance is and remains the association’s statutes. Even more, the reference is the French version published to the Belgian Official Gazette, however both a French informal version and an English informal version are provided for the convenience of all PRACE contacts.
Mission
PRACE strives to represent the interests and identify the needs of users of HPC and related technologies – artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cloud computing, data science etc. – in Europe. The Association pursues actions to enable high-impact research and innovation across all disciplines and industrial applications. We thereby aim ultimately at enhancing European scientific, technological and economic competitiveness for the benefit of society.
To achieve its purpose, PRACE will, e.g.:
- Promote the use of HPC and related technologies, and recognise and promote excellence and achievements in this field to solve the most complex and advanced scientific and engineering problems, thereby enhancing European competitiveness both for science and industry
- Issue recommendations targeting the effectiveness of the use of the European HPC Infrastructure (scientific and innovation objectives, access mechanisms, support programmes, availability and accessibility of technologies, etc).
- Analyse the impact of HPC infrastructure on European scientific excellence and innovation and generally collect information both on technical topics and on collaboration opportunities
- Organise networking between the members
- Establish international partnerships and collaborations promoting HPC at a global scale
Pillars and Principles
For its Third Phase, PRACE has adopted the following strong guidelines for its action.
PRACE adopts a user-centric approach
No matter the topic or activity developed in PRACE, they all are thought to benefit the users in the end. In general, PRACE collects feedback and expectations from users to allow HPC Centres to adapt their HPC-HPDA-AI-QC facilities to the needs of their users.
PRACE empowers User Communities
PRACE organises the active involvement of user communities, scientific and industrial, within a transparent governance model enabling them to define and drive PRACE activities.
PRACE provides support for best utilisation of Europe HPC Infrastructure
PRACE develops initiatives to support users (training, application support, co-development …) towards an efficient use of the infrastructure.
PRACE fosters International Collaboration
PRACE maintains and develop collaboration beyond Europe.
Governance
The governance of PRACE is essentially structured in two tiers: one defining the fundamentals of the Association – the Assembly of the Members – and the other implementing the Association action made of two bodies – the Council and the Executive Board.
Assembly of the Members
This is the supreme deliberative body of PRACE: an assembly of people for the purpose of unhurried consideration and discussions. All the members of PRACE have a seat and a say in the Assembly (one member, one vote); the weight of a vote of a member is a function of the member category. The Assembly meets at least one a year.
Council
The Council steers the implementation of the programme and actions of the Association voted by the Assembly. Representative of the Assembly but not directly related to any given membership.
The composition of the Council is meant to be representative of the communities PRACE supports – and in particular of the PRACE Members without a direct link between membership and seats in the Council – also in their diversity. The persons serving on the Council are recognised as authoritative by their peers. The Council has maximum 30 members, distributed equally amongst the HPC Centres, the Scientific, and the Industry Sections + 1 external member (outsider of the HPC community). Members of the Council are appointed by the Assembly for maximum 2 consecutive terms of maximum 2 years each (we strive for an annual replacement of 1/3 of the Council members each year).
| Name | Section | Domain / Category | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| < Open > | External | ||
| Maria Grazia Giuffreda | HPC Centres | Large HPC Centre | Switzerland |
| Massimiliano Guarrasi | HPC Centres | Large / (Pre)Exascale HPC Centre | Italy |
| Norbert Meyer | HPC Centres | Small / Petascale HPC Centre | Poland |
| Mark Parsons | HPC Centres | Large / (Pre)Exascale HPC Centre | UK |
| Filip Stanek | HPC Centres | Petascale Site | Czech Republic |
| Martin van Gijzen | HPC Centres | Tier 2 Centre – New member | Netherlands |
| Andrea Beccari | Industry | Medium pharma company | Italy |
| Markus Geveler | Industry | Cloud computing for engineering | Germany |
| Timo Kökenhoff | Industry | Large aerospace company | France |
| <Open> | Industry | ||
| Mariano Vazquez | Industry | Spin-off – Biomedical simulations | Spain |
| David Waroquiers | Industry | Spin-off – Material Science | Belgium |
| Edouard Audit | Science | Energy | France |
| Miguel Avillez | Science | Astrophysics | Portugal |
| Zoe Cournia | Science | Biomedical | Greece |
| Andreas Lintermann | Science | Engineering | Germany |
| Leon Kos | Science | Computational Science & Eng. | Slovenia |
| Matej Praprotnik | Science | Material Science | Slovenia |
Executive Board
The Executive Board is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Association and its office and the proper execution of the Association governance. It is responsible for the implementation of the actions and programmes decided by Council (close collaboration with the Chair and Vice-Chair of bodies and WG). The Executive Board is composed of the Directors of the Association, currently a Managing Director (responsible for overall management of the organisation) and an Operations Director (responsible for projects and service contracts execution) and are amongst the permanent personnel of the organisation. The Directors are appointed by the Assembly and the Council oversees the performance of the Directors.