Professor Mike Gravenor outlining the role played by Supercomputing Wales during Covid-19.
Data experts, technology suppliers and policymakers have gathered to celebrate the power and future of supercomputing in Wales.
The event highlighted the impact of research enabled by High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities and research software engineering teams across all four Supercomputing Wales (SCW) universities: Swansea, Aberystwyth, Cardiff, and Bangor.
At the conference, held at Cardiff University, Economy Minister Vaughan Gething announced a further £2 million in support for Supercomputing Wales from the European Regional Development Fund through Welsh Government, bringing the total to £11.9 million for the period 2015-2022, with University partner investment topping up the programme value to £19.6 million.
Mr Gething said: “Research, science, and technology has never been more important in tackling the major global problems of our time.
“Supercomputing Wales is more than just computing infrastructure – it is an important community of research software engineers, technical staff and researchers working to achieve substantial outcomes for science, our universities and for Wales.”
He added importance was demonstrated by its invaluable work during the global pandemic in modelling the spread of Covid-19 in Wales and sequencing Covid-19 genomes.
Mike Gravenor, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science was among the guest speakers and outlined exactly the role played by Supercomputing Wales in data analysis to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.
Swansea University’s Professor Biagio Lucini, who also addressed the conference, said: “It is very exciting to see how far Supercomputing has come in Wales in supporting a range of important academic research topics, enabling our Universities to excel on a global scale.”