SCIENCE

PRACE Advanced Training Centres (PATC)

The mission of the PRACE Advanced Training Centres (PATCs) is to carry out and coordinate training and education activities that enable the European research community to utilise the computational infrastructure available through PRACE. The long-term vision is that such centres will become the hubs and key drivers of European high-performance computing education.

The training centres will provide top-class education and training opportunities for computational scientists in Europe The training centres are also the main bodies responsible for producing materials for the PRACE training portal: www.prace-ri.eu/training

“The establishment of the PRACE Advanced Training Centers is one of the most visible achievements of PRACE to the European researchers”, says Dr. Pekka Manninen, co-leader of the PRACE Training and Dissemination Pillar and the Head of Education, Outreach and Training at CSC, one of the new PATC hosting sites. “Competitiveness means being skilled. The PATC network enables us to synergise European HPC training activities for the benefit of the whole of Europe.“

“Contemporary HPC systems offer unprecedented computing power and their architectures are constantly evolving. The ongoing challenge has always been to upskill scientists and programmers to maximise efficiency and research output on such systems,“ adds Dr. Simon Wong, leader of the training work package in PRACE-2IP and Head of Education & Training at ICHEC (Ireland). “PRACE has shown its commitment to address this challenge by establishing the PATCs to significantly expand its training programme.”

There will be at least one PRACE PATC in operation at any one time, but the geographical locations of centres, assessed every two years, may and will vary over time. Training events may also be organised at locations external to PATC hosting sites.