HPC the new science & technology frontier
| Lyna Mohamad |
PERMANENT Secretary (Technical and Professional) at the Ministry of Development, Dato Paduka Hj Suhaimi Hj Gafar said the use of High-Performance Computing (HPC) in science and technology is the frontier that all must embrace.
It can be used to solve complex problems in hours and days that could previously have taken days or months to solve. The rapid problem solving capability hence enables researchers to analyse many scenarios in reasonable amount of time enabling solutions in drug discovery, weather forecasting, climate modelling and better utilisation of limited resources such as oil and natural gas.
Permanent Secretary (Technical and Professional) at the Ministry of Development, Dato Paduka Hj Suhaimi Hj Gafar. – PHOTO: LYNA MOHAMAD
He was speaking at the opening of the High Performance Computing (HPC) Workshop on Healthcare & Biotechnology and the HPC Workshop on Climate Modelling organised by UBD IBM Centre on Monday.
Biomedical Informatics is at an exciting crossroad where the computational challenges facing researchers, clinicians and public health professionals now exceed the computational power typically available in an academic biomedical setting.
This, he added, is exciting as it means that the advances in high performance computing from other disciplines can be brought to bear on the great challenges of life sciences, health and medical research.
The opportunities to develop trends in ambulatory hospital data, catch and avert drug related mishaps are truly astounding and computational power is now at the very core of their ability to rapidly advance the state of clinical care and healthcare.
As participants at the workshops will be introduced to the use of HPC in healthcare and biotechnology, he expressed hopes that this will inspire them to embrace this technology and help spread it in their respective organisations.
“This will ensure we are keeping up with the times, I also exhort the participants to share their experiences, challenges and vision and network for collaboration purposed to ensure that we all work together efficiently.”
Touching on the subsequent workshop on climate modelling, he noted that activities of human beings are creating changes in the environment that need to be understood and tackled for the good of this generation and subsequent generations.
Many scientists are working on understanding the earth’s climate and the causes of climate change, how climate may continue to change in the future and the effects of climate change on the ecosystems, agriculture productions, oceans and so forth.
Climate scientists working with computer scientists have been developing models of the very complex environment and running them on high performance computers to understand what affects the climate and how the climate will change in the future.
“This is a very powerful tool to make policy decisions and to help us to adapt to the changes. The climate modelling workshop will bring awareness to the participants on the contributing factors to climate and climate modelling.”
