Owl Project Program

Through our Owl Project program our HPC and scientific advisors offer special scientific and technical support for selected projects that are of high strategic relevance to our research or service portfolio. This support goes beyond the scope of regular consulting and includes for example:

  • joint development or optimization of application and library codes,
  • development of proof-of-concept prototypes evaluating new hardware and software technologies
  • development and implementation of new services or infrastructure
  • evaluation of new concepts such as workflow systems or archive solutions in very close collaboration with users

The criteria for the selection as Owl project are:

  • the involvement of PC² leads to results that increase the usability or efficiency of our HPC systems for many users
  • the project targets key HPC technologies of particular relevance for PC²
  • the project targets one of the application, method or hardware competence areas of PC²
    • application domains: atomistic simulations, optoelectronics and quantum photonics, machine learning for intelligent systems
    • methods: simulation methods and algorithms, machine learning methods and algorithms, numerical libraries for heterogeneous computing in computational science and engineering
    • hardware: energy-efficient HPC with FPGA clusters

Interested researchers can apply for being admitted to the Owl project program in their proposal for computing time for a small or large project. The resource allocation board recommends which project should be admitted to the Owl program, the final selection is made by the PC² management. Applications from young researchers, female applications and further underrepresented groups are particularly encouraged and are treated preferentially.

Current Owl Projects for period April 1st 2020 to March 31st 2021:

  • Infl­­uences of heading on structural and functional brain networks (hpc-prf-headbn, Prof. Dr. Dr. Claus Reinsberger, Sportmedizin, Universität Paderborn)
    • Simplification and extension of services for non-HPC-native research communities
  • Linear-Scaling DFT (hpc-prf-ldft, Prof. Dr. Thomas D. Kühne, Dynamics of Condensed Matter, Theoretical Chemistry, Paderborn University)
    • implemenation and extension of the submatrix method in CP2K
    • PC² personel involved: Michael Laß, Robert Schade
  • HighPerMeshes Project (hpc-prf-hpmesh, Prof. Dr. Christian Plessl, High-performance IT Systems, Paderborn University)
    • Code optimization
    • PC² personel involved: Tobias Kenter, Heinrich Riebler, Paolo Gorlani
  • Multichannel Speech Enhancement and Automatic Speech Recognition (hpc-prf-nt1, Prof. Dr. Reinhold Häb-Umbach, Nachrichtentechnik, Universität Paderborn)
    • Extension and optimization of machine learning capabilities at PC²
  • Mixed Valence Organic Radical for Efficient DNP Polarization (hpc-prf-wcat, Prof. Dr. Thomas D. Kühne, Dynamics of Condensed Matter, Theoretical Chemistry, Paderborn University)
    • improvement of accelerator (GPU, FPGA) support for general molecular dynamics simulations
    • PC² personel involved: Xin Wu, Arjun Ramaswami, Robert Schade
  • Job-Specific-Profiling and Automatic Recommendation Systems for HPC
    • development and real-world testing
    • PC² personel involved: Michael Schwarz, Robert Schade