BioSupercomputing Newsletter Vol.11

5th workshop on HPCI with the K computer as primary resource for drug discovery and medicine

　Osaka University Graduate School of Engineering Science has been conducting an “Education Program for Predictive Medicine and Drug Discovery on a High Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI)” jointly with the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology since 2011, as part of the “Supercomputational Life Science(SCLS)”. The core of this education program is the pair of classes “Biosimulation” and “Bioinformatics” provided for graduate students who will be main player in super-computational science/engineering. These subjects are also provided as part of the “Osaka University Graduate Program for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies” through the Center for Advanced Medical Engineering and Informatics (MEI Center) educational program, and will accept students from all graduate schools by arranging the classes on Saturdays.

　These classes are, at the same time, open to engineers/researchers of industries and graduate students of other universities as part of the MEI Center Skill Course, an Osaka University Extension. In this framework, the auditors will be given certificates issued by the President of Osaka University.

　As an outreach activity, a series of workshops on HPCI with the K computer as a primary resource for drug discovery and medicine has been held annually in Osaka and Tokyo. This provides a forum to translate the outputs of frontier research towards in-silico drug design, in-silico medicine and predictive medicine at academic and research institutions into advanced industrial technologies by inviting lecturers from cutting-edge research groups. Plenary/keynote lectures as well as sessions are organized at conferences hosted by academic societies/institutes in order to promote high performance computing in bioengineering, bioinformatics and life sciences, among others.

　This year, an introductory class entitled “Introduction to Biosimulation” is being launched for university freshmen regardless of their academic study area to provide an opportunity to open their eyes to supercomputing science/engineering. These activities are aimed at encouraging the young generation, especially current students, to engage in computational pharmaceutics, medicine and bioengineering. For details, please visit the website at http://hpci.me.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/

　The objectives of SCLS are to drive breakthrough accomplishments by taking advantage of HPCI (High Performance Computing Infrastructure) with the K computer at the core, as well as to form a wider community for computational life science users by supporting research and developing human resources. To achieve these objectives, we have provided a SCLS supercomputer system highly compatible with the K computer and publicly invited research agendas that utilize this SCLS supercomputer system, as part of our support for the active and broad use of HPCI by life science researchers and engineers.

　Any researchers and engineers who are involved in life science can apply for the use of the SCLS supercomputer system, and actually we have had a number of applicants from research and educational institutions to private companies. An applicant who has a research agenda can use the SCLS supercomputer system free of charge, and also extend the use period by submitting a continuation request.

　Acceptance of applications from the public to use the SCLS supercomputer system (the first call was in FY2012) has been made four times up to the FY2014 first round call. A total of 34 research agendas were adopted, and 144 persons have been involved in those agendas. As of the end of the FY2014 first round call (the system was available for use from April 2014; five agendas were adopted), 23 agendas including new ones had been going on, and 117 persons had been involved in those agendas.

　Next, we plan the FY2015 first round call which starts looking for applicants from around February 2015. As we are approaching the end of the Strategic Programs for Innovative Research, the FY2015 first round call for the SCLS supercomputer system will be the last one that SCLS carries out. Although we do not have much time left for using the system, we look forward to your application.