INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research
Sino-Norwegian International Partnership for Excellent Education and Research on
High Performance Computing Data Science with Supercomputer
Alternative title: Sino-Norwegian International Partnership for Excellent Education and Research on
High Performance Computing Data Science with Supercomputer
This partnership between Norwegian and Chinese institutions of research and higher education has conducted summer and winter schools, workshops, seminars and mobility stays for graduate and post-graduate students and researchers, to teach the application of high performance computing (HPC) methods to data science problems.
Through the last three months of the project, two students from University of Stavanger completed their mobility stays at Huazhong University of Science and Technology taking graduate level classes. Additionally, the final conference was hosted by National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou with participation from all partners. During the closing, partners reflected on the great collaboration during the last three years, and developed a plan for continued collaboration in the future. Several ideas included joint Norway-China applications in the areas of digitalization as well as initial planning for the extension of the current Superdata project which is currently under evaluation by the Research Council of Norway.
The collaboration was awarded a prize from the Chinese Society for Science and Technology Journalism for their contribution in the field of Data Science.
Two projects which were applied for by the partners during the previous reporting period under the call for Chinese-Norwegian collaboration projects on digitalisation were unfunded during the final stage review.
As a result of this project and the ongoing Partnership beyond INTPART, both scientific research and technological innovations will be accelerated by a proliferation of HPDA expertise in academia, industry, and public sector. This project and recognition of results has provided several opportunities, particularly for the Norwegian partners in both future collaborations with research institutions, but also industry partners. Altogether, the Partnership was a great success and is expected to continue to attract talented students and add greatly to the excellence of research and education in Norwegian academic environments.
(1) The project conducted three summer/winter schools and four workshops.
(2) Sixteen researcher mobility stays occurred during the project period
(3) Four separate projects were applied for to extend and expand the partnership
(4) Five research articles were printed in high quality journals with several more submitted and still under review.
This partnership between Norwegian and Chinese institutions of research and higher education will conduct summer schools, workshops, seminars and mobility stays for post-graduate students and researchers, to teach the application of HPC methods to data science problems.
This field is called high performance data analysis (HPDA). The partnership will teach joint courses, and in so doing build a complete HPDA curriculum. Beyond INTPART the Partnership will ultimately offer an ongoing international joint degree programme on HPDA.
Through the collaboration, research-based education will be implemented and refined, and high-quality research papers will be published by PhD students participating actively in the educational events. Public sector and industry professionals will also be invited.
Large volumes and varieties of data require not only massive storage capacity and intelligent structuring of data, but also high processing power to perform extensive analysis and modelling. This is why HPC methods are needed, as the field of data science matures to meet the increasing demands from Big Data research and applications.
The technical challenges in this project consist of teaching a concise, integrated view of various parallel processing paradigms together with data analysis, as well as key technologies in the various aspects of HPDA. Educationally, the focus will be on extending an instructional approach, through collaborative open-ended problem-solving, into the practice of HPDA research.
As a result of this project and the ongoing Partnership beyond INTPART, both scientific research and technological innovations can be accelerated by a proliferation of HPDA expertise in academia, industry, and public sector. Altogether, the Partnership will attract talented students and add greatly to the excellence of research and education in Norwegian academic environments.