A New EuroHPC JU Advisory Group Officially Established

During their meeting on Thursday 2^nd May 2024 in Luxembourg, the members of the new RIAG elected Estela Suarez as their new chair for the next two years. Estela Suarez is Professor at the University of Bonn in Germany as well as co-lead of division "Novel System Architecture Design" at the Jülich Supercomputing Center (JSC).

The RIAG members also elected Daniele Cesarini as their vice-chair. Daniele Cesarini is project manager and HPC technology specialist at the HPC department of CINECA. 

The new RIAG will continue providing independent advice to the Governing Board of the EuroHPC JU. The group consists of twelve members and eleven observers appointed by the EuroHPC JU Governing Board and Private Members. The newly appointed RIAG members and observers will serve in their roles for the next two years. They are representatives of academia and industry as well as HPC users and technology suppliers. They represent different parts of the European supercomputing ecosystem and come from twelve different European countries. This will allow them to bring diverse point of views and backgrounds to accomplish the RIAG tasks.

Now that the group is officially set up, the RIAG can start performing the following tasks:

• Drawing up and regularly updating the draft multiannual strategic research and innovation agenda of the EuroHPC JU. This draft agenda identifies research and innovation priorities to support the development of an integrated HPC, quantum computing and data ecosystem in the European Union (EU).
• Providing advice on potential international cooperation activities in research and innovation.
• Issuing recommendations to promote training and education priorities for addressing key competences and the skills gap in HPC and quantum computing technologies and applications, in particular for industry.
• Organising public consultations open to all public and private stakeholders having an interest in the fields of HPC and quantum computing to inform them and collect feedback.

Background

The governance of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is ensured by three bodies: 

• a Governing Board;
• an Executive Director;
• an Industrial and Scientific Advisory Board.

The Industrial and Scientific Advisory Board consists of the RIAG and the Infrastructure Advisory Group (INFRAG) and includes representatives of academia and industry as users and technology suppliers. This board provides independent advice to the Governing Board on the strategic research and innovation agenda and on the acquisition and operation of the supercomputers owned by the Joint Undertaking, the capability building and widening activities programme and the federation, connectivity and international cooperation activities programme.

As the mandate of the previous RIAG 2022-2024 recently came to an end, new RIAG members have been appointed to tave over  RIAG tasks.

Updates on both groups are available in the EuroHPC website:

• RIAG updates
• INFRAG updates