It’s been a busy few weeks for Insight Media, with two project meetings in Spain followed by a trip to the Sorbonne in Paris to cover a fascinating conference about the future of high-performance computing.
The first meeting took place in Vigo in Galicia, Spain, where partners in our Horizon Europe project FLASH-COMP gathered for its 12-month catch-up to discuss and review progress as well as plan work for the next six months.
The main aim of the FLASH-COMP project is to develop a fast and reliable quality control solution that uses artificial intelligence to help identify and remove defects during composite manufacturing processes.
Work to date has focused on developing the technology that underpins the solution – AI algorithms, corrective and control strategies as well as assessing the preliminary simulation requirements.
With the meeting taking place at the AIMEN facilities, the host partner took the opportunity to demonstrate the resin infusion process being used by the aircraft use case at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in the production of its aircraft wings.
Insight was able to update partners about the extensive dissemination activity that has taken place to date and is planned over the coming months. This includes the exciting development of the first FLASH-COMP film, an animated explainer that is currently in production – watch this space.
After Vigo it was on to Bilbao, in the Basque region of Northern Spain, where our last ongoing Horizon 2020 project, HyperCOG, was due to have its final EC review as it comes to an end after 48 months of hard work.
The overall aim of the HyperCOG project has been to demonstrate the potential of cyber-physical systems and data analytics to transform the process industry and associated business models. After four years, several cutting-edge technologies have been developed, two of which are now available on the market.
The review meeting was held at the Tecnalia facilities in Derio, just outside Bilbao city, and the process gave the project partners the opportunity to summarise the work and the outcomes of the project and the EC reviewers the chance to assess the success or otherwise of that work.
It was a useful process for all partners involved as the reviewers’ comments helped us fine-tune the final report for the project before it was submitted. Overall, the comments were positive, too, with the HyperCOG results delivering real commercial potential and concrete technological advances, which are summarised in Insight’s film of the project.
After Bilbao, it was a short hop up to Paris for a ground-breaking conference hosted at the beautiful Sorbonne by PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, with whom Insight has worked as communication partner since 2011.
The aim of the conference was to discuss the next phase for PRACE as it looks to transition into an association of users and HPC centres in Europe and develop and publish a new scientific and innovation case for HPC.
Insight is working with PRACE to help reposition the organisation in the European HPC ecosystem as well as summarise the areas of advanced computing it needs to focus on when making the next scientific case for HPC that puts people at the heart of how HPC is used.
The meeting was inspiring, with talks on how super computers are helping expand our knowledge of the universe, how quantum computing is leading to new discovery and how AI is very quickly changing the whole HPC landscape. Discussion also focused on how data is best collected, stored and shared, as well as the support needed for software development.
Insight is now working hard to summarise this discussion in order to help focus the brilliant minds of those hoping to shape the future of supercomputing with the publication of the new Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC in January 2024.