BSC hosts its 9thDoctoral Symposium in a three intense and face-to-face day event

16 May 2022

This 9thedition of the BSC Doctoral Symposium has been especially intense and rewarding, as it has been the first face-to-face Doctoral Symposium since 2019. The Education department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) organized the event that was held from 10 to 12 of May at Aula Master of the UPC.

In this year's edition, there have been six talk sessions with 24 talks tackling the topics of simulations and modelling, performance, life sciences and machine learning and its applications. 19 posters were exhibited and presented during three poster sessions that created lively discussion and gave the authors the opportunity to explain their research and results.

The keynote talk was in charge of Bastian Koller, the managing director of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). Koller talked about CASTIEL project and focused on “Competences as the key to success for strong technological developments”. Koller presented the idea behind the activity of building National Centres of Excellence in Europe and how it has been implemented. For Koller, competences are very important in the European HPC strategy and also how to interact with the constantly growing network at national and European level.

As for the tutorial, Moisés Martínez, Biopolis World Founder, offered the two session’s tutorial titled “Effective team work and external collaborations”.

Maria Ribera Sancho, the director of the Education department and the Associated Director of BSC, Josep M. Martorell, were in charge of the welcome session.

Ribera says, “We are very pleased to be able to consolidate the doctoral symposium in this ninth edition, this time face-to-face. From the first session there has been an atmosphere of participation, interest and a very high level of BSC PhD students". Also adds, “This has been a special year, in which the BSC has launched its PhD Program and this gives even more meaning to the doctoral symposium as a meeting point and as a way to scientifically share the topics and results of doctorates”.

PhD students at BSC

The goal of the symposium is twofold: first, to provide a framework to share results of research undertaken by PhD students at BSC; second, to offer training sessions on topics and skills that will be useful to them as future researchers and professionals. The symposium offers an interactive forum for PhD students, both those who are just beginning their research and those who have progressed far enough to share some results.

Currently, there are more than a hundred PhD students at BSC from 25 different countries. 41% of the students are international staff and the rest are from Spain. The total number of students who have passed through the BSC exceeds 400.