The Italian most powerful supercomputing facilities, among which the CMCC supercomputer infrastructure, are being made available to public and private scientific research working against the coronavirus. 8 million hours of calculation are allocated for free to meet the request for computing resources to contribute to the mitigation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for applications is open.

The Associazione Big Data (ABD) promotes fast access to HPC supercomputing facilities owned and managed by the members of the Association for projects that aim to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The members of the ABD that joined the action, CINECA, CMCC, ENEA, INFN-CNAF, almost represent the whole HPC capability at national level.

The identification of new therapeutic practices, the study of viral antibodies, the knowledge of the molecular structure of the virus and its mutations, the preparation of an effective vaccine are strongly based on in silico research and development methods. As well as the elaboration of the diffusion and containment models of the epidemic.

For this reason, the ABD is welcoming project proposals requesting computing resources to contribute to the mitigation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers of all nationalities with affiliation to both public and private Italian institutions can submit research projects. Projects can be submitted using the web portal ISCRA DB.

In non-exhaustive terms, since there is no disciplinary limit, the following topics are referred to by way of example:

• Biomolecular research
• Biochemistry research
• Bioinformatics research
• Bio-simulations
• Epidemiologic analysis
• Mitigation the impact of the pandemic.

The action is ready for continuous project submission and each project will be immediately evaluated by a panel of experts appointed by the ABD board of directors made up of:

Prof. Rita Casadio Università di Bologna
Prof. Roberto De Renzi Università di Parma
Prof. Raffaele Tripiccione INFN
Prof. Valeria Ruggiero Università di Ferrara
Prof. Elisa Molinari Università di Modena

This call is open until further notice. Applications are evaluated by a minimum of two experts within the next business day and start as soon as possible if awarded.

Project proposals can be submitted at the following link: https://userdb.hpc.cineca.it/user/register, or through the “Projects” section of Associazione Big Data‘s website: https://associazionebigdata.it/projects/.