The Carl Zeiss Foundation is funding the Competence Center for HPC in the Natural Sciences at the Institute of Computer Science of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The competence center for high performance computing (HPC) promotes interdisciplinary collaborations between the natural sciences and computer science at Mainz University. HPC plays an important role in the science-oriented fields of the JGU. The use of computer simulations is one of the most important techniques, in addition to modeling and experimentation, for generating new insights in the natural sciences. HPC has thus become a factor that enhances the profile of Mainz University and has contributed decisively to the competitiveness of our research.
With regard to translational research, the objective of the new Competence Center is to facilitate the successful transfer of research results in computer science (i.e. design, implementation, and evaluation of scalable methods for analyzing and storing large amounts of data) so that these can be employed within the natural sciences. In particular, the competence center works on applications in the fields of bioinformatics, the analysis of large amounts of data from particle accelerators, the identification and localization of meteorological structures, and the geosciences. The center focuses on the areas of hardware accelerators, benchmarking and application optimization, data mining, visual analytics, and stochastic optimization. It is also planned to create suitable program libraries to provide for the widest possible reutilization of results.
Funding Period
01/2015 -- 12/2018