Brian Wiley from Cohort 5 has recently been on a research visit to Germany. He writes about his time there:
“To kick off Summer of 2025, at the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) Research Centre just outside of Cologne, Germany, collaborators from all around Europe engaged in a week long school to discuss their quantum mechanics (QM) interface for computation simulations of large-scale molecular mechanics (MM) in biological systems. The name of the QM/MM interface is MiMiC developed by a group at (EPFL).
Not only did we learn how to use the software on various HPCs around Germany and Italy like JUWELS and Leonardo (HPC Cineca), we also had many great lectures including the theory used in MiMiC, how it was implemented, how the communication happens at different levels at which the software can be applied, how the computer architectures are used to enhance throughput, as well as poster-session competition and discussion.
On the last day of the school there were presentations by the director, post-docs and PhD candidates on the application of MiMiC and how high-throughput exascale HPCs were leveraged to pioneer critical research to help the world make better materials, cure disease, and inevitably make life on Earth better for the future.
We also got to tour the new €500 million facility funded by the European Union, JUPITER, which allows 50% usage to EuroHPC as well as 50% to all German Universities to develop and run large-scale computational, machine learning and AI projects. And last but not least we got a tour of their Quantum Computer provided by D-Wave Quantum. One interesting fact is that we toured while they had engineers visiting to calibrate one of FZJ’s quantum computers which involves precise calibration of lasers and mirrors. The calibration will take 6 months!”
Photo of JUWELS and other HPCs combined
