BioExcel Centre of Excellence

The Centre of Excellence for Computational Biomolecular Research (BioExcel) was established in 2015, and funded again in 2018, to help accelerate the development of HPC technologies for the needs of Life Science research.

The centre brings together maintainers of the most widely used European codes with expertise in research areas, industrial outreach and training.

BioExcel is an explicitly user-driven centre; work is prioritised based on identified needs from users with the potential for large scientific/industrial impact - and a long-term horizon has made it possible to target future computers systems, including the present pre-Exascale resources installed.

BioExcel has had a significant impact on the leadership of EU-developed software in the community: There is now more than one paper published per hour (counting 24/7/365) citing the applications supported by the CoE.

The goals of BioExcel are to (i) ensure that the most widely used European codes in the domain provide high performance, efficiency and scaling; (ii) identify user needs and prioritise feature & performance/porting requests; (iii) provide tutorials and training to educate Life Science users with best practices for how to use HPC resources; (iv) be the preferred EU partner for international organisations; and (v) provide sustainable business paths for companies that need commercial support or want to fund development of specific features.