Strengthening Research Practice in Biopharmaceutical In Silico Modelling through Scientific Computing

To strengthen in silico biopharmaceutical research performance through Scientific Computing services as a D4D initiative for HEI's, scientific institutes and industry.

Scientific Computing (High Performance Computing and Big Data) has rapidly become an important tool for researchers. Thanks to big donations from Ghent University, various centralized supercomputers are already providing Scientific Computing services to researchers in Cuba. This project will stimulate best practices in Scientific Computing, so that (1) research centres can provide ubiquitous and easy access to these supercomputers and (2) researchers can make effective use of their capacity.

Challenges for scientists who are not IT experts include access to scientific computing, managing research software, data science knowledge and performance optimization. The project proposal is aimed at providing researchers with autonomy (scientific software installation and license sharing by end-user), data analysis techniques and code optimization for parallel processing of data. In collaboration with industry partners, we focus on in silico experimental modelling for biotechnology and pharmaceutical research; the generated outcome can benefit other research fields too.