On Monday, September 18, the official launching of The Cyprus Institute’s “TEAMING” project for the creation of a Centre of Excellence in Simulation and Data Science took place at a ceremony held at The Cyprus Institute’s premises.

The project aims at the creation of a Center of Excellence that will explore the opportunities arising from the convergence of supercomputing, big data, and cloud computing technologies. The Center will work across disciplines, from life and physical sciences to engineering and the humanities, and within a collaborative framework with the scientific community, industry and government.

The Centre will allow Cyprus to not only join the rest of Europe in terms of computing capability, but also enhance its scientific and industrial competitiveness, while simultaneously address urgent problems of socioeconomic importance to Cyprus, and its regional role in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The vision for the Center revolves around three major pillars: The first is the use of simulation and data science to address grand challenges. This includes topics such as preserving the cultural heritage of Cyprus and Eastern Mediterranean, predicting climate change and its impact on heritage and society, exploring energy renewables for island environments, developing personalized medicine, understanding the building blocks of the universe, and the discovery of new materials.

The second pillar is the development of cross-disciplinary teams that will address research areas such as mathematical modelling and algorithms, novel computer architectures, machine learning, data management tools and services, and data mining and Visualization.

Finally, the last pillar is to provide cutting-edge computational infrastructure used in areas such as the development of open infrastructure for simulation and data analytics that is open to all academic researchers, government, and industry; engaging researchers and technical personnel for providing expert support and training; and for bringing innovative computer architectures and the latest technologies to Cyprus.

The project has received funding from the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, and is of one-year duration. CyI’s Prof. Constantia Alexandrou is coordinating the project, which partners with the biggest German computational center (Forschungszentrum Jülich). Local partners are the Departments of Antiquities and Meteorology, the Nicosia General Hospital, and two SMEs, Hyperion Systems Engineering, and SignalGeneriX.