£3.7m EPSRC funding for High Performance Computing

UCL will play a key role in a new £3.7million regional centre for supercomputing, following an award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The funding, awarded following a successful collaborative bid with the Universities of Oxford, Bristol and Southampton, will be used to institute and operate a Centre of Innovation for the application of High Performance Computing (HPC) methods and technologies. The £3.7m grant marks the first significant activity for the e-Infrastructure South Consortium formed by the four universities in 2011. The Consortium aims to explore and exploit opportunities for the sharing of research e-infrastructure (hardware platforms, applications software, user support services and skills) across the four institutions. In addition to sharing resources, it is hoped that the combination of these research intensive institutions will foster an environment of collaboration, where computationally enabled research projects can be co-developed and delivered. As such, the EPSRC award marks the first step on a much more ambitious journey for the e-Infrastructure South Consortium. Professor David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research), said: "This is an initiative of vital importance as we work towards the development of a world-class supercomputing research infrastructure for the UK.