EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium announces High-Performance Computing School resumption

The continuation of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) School in 2023 to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia was announced during the EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium at the Supercomputing Asia Conference (SCA) 2023.

The school will be held in-person and will welcome back international luminaries to teach the fundamentals of HPC and its applications to critical domains to students from all ASEAN Member States. For the first time, the school director will be an ASEAN scientist.

In his presentation, Dr Fabrizio Gagliardi from the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre in Spain, Director of the HPC School in 2021 and in 2022, commented, "After two years of successfully organising and directing the EU-ASEAN HPC School, I am particularly proud and happy to pass the responsibility over to a local scientist. This is the best proof of a long-term sustainability model made possible by the EU-funded E-READI project."

The symposium was a step towards the validation of networks that are already thriving as well as the stock-taking of the cooperation between the EU, ASEAN, and Japan in the field of HPC.

Henriette Faergemann, First Counsellor for Digital Cooperation between the EU and ASEAN, opened the symposium and briefed on the most recent HPC developments in Europe. She highlighted the benefits of supercomputers for the creation of digital twins for the earth, the brain and the human body, and how the EU is stepping up cooperation with ASEAN and the wider region on sustainable digital connectivity and through Digital Partnerships with Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore.

Zurina Moktar, Head of Science and Technology Division of the ASEAN Secretariat, also delivered her remarks during the opening session and mentioned, “ASEAN looks forward to addressing three main challenges besetting HPC adoption in the region, namely the high upfront and maintenance cost, the divergence of technical capability and readiness to adopt HPC among ASEAN Member states, and the HPC carbon footprint that may affect ASEAN’s dual transition of going digital and going green.”

The progress of science depends very much on international collaboration, sharing of experiences and research infrastructures. The symposium offered a platform to discuss the importance of data-sharing and common scientific efforts to find solutions to global challenges. Domain experts exchanged views on important subjects such as high-speed data processing to address various challenges, ranging from epidemics to global warming to food shortages and decarbonisation of agriculture.

The symposium covered the discussion on the HPC School and its future in ASEAN, HPC use cases including the handling of health threats, and the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the ASEAN-Japan Cooperation.

In her final remarks, Faergemann stressed the theme of this year’s SCA, Sustainable Supercomputing for a Greener Future, as a confirmation of the importance of HPC in responding to all the challenges that the world is facing today. She added that the EU, ASEAN, and Japan work closely on both green and digital issues, and in all these fields, science has a crucial role to play, and HPC appears as a key instrument that will enable us to accelerate the achievement of significant results.

Deputy Secretary-General for ASEAN Economic Community, Satvinder Singh, concluded the event by saying, “ASEAN, through the commitment from member states and longstanding partners like the EU and Japan, aims to establish the ASEAN Shared HPC Facility. We need to start bringing in major players in the HPC market. I am convinced that more resources can be efficiently utilised through public private partnerships.’’

Following the success of its first iteration in 2021, and the interest raised by the second event in 2022, the EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium was again held at the Supercomputing Asia Conference, co-organised by various HPC centres and anchored by the National Supercomputing Centre of Singapore.

This year, the original stakeholders of the ASEAN HPC Task Force – the  European Union, the ASEAN Committee on Science, Technology, and Innovation and Japanese research institutions – presented updates on their collaborations under the theme “Status EU-ASEAN-Japan Partnership on HPC” during a panel that included scientists, practitioners, and public authorities. The symposium was supported by the Enhanced Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument (E-READI) in coordination with the European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) and chaired by the E-READI Senior Advisor Dr Fabrizio Gagliardi.

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established on 8 August 1967. The ASEAN Member States are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. On 31 December 2015, the ASEAN Community was formally established. The ASEAN Secretariat is based in Jakarta.

The European Union (EU) is the economic and political union of 27 Member States. Together, the European Union has built a zone of stability, democracy and sustainable development while maintaining cultural diversity, tolerance and individual freedom. In 2012, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the goals of peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. The European Union is the world's largest trading bloc, and the world's largest source and destination of foreign direct investment. Collectively, the European Union and its member countries are the largest donors of Official Development Assistance (ODA), providing more than half of ODA globally. The 27 Member States of the European Union (in alphabetical order) are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

The Enhanced Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument (E-READI) is a development cooperation programme that facilitates cooperation and dialogue between the EU and ASEAN in policy areas of joint interest. Drawing on the EU’s experience of regional integration, E-READI further strengthens both the ASEAN regional integration process as well as the overall ASEAN-EU strategic partnership.