DTU Skylab was packed to the rafters on Friday, 28 November when the University hosted the inauguration of Denmark’s new supercomputer. The powerful computer is located on DTU Risø Campus, can store 7.5 petabytes of data, and is optimized to process the rapidly growing volumes of data that are generated every day in the health sector.
The goal is to eventually be able to conduct research into—and ultimately provide--personalized treatment for each patient.
DTU, University of Copenhagen (KU), and the Danish e-learning Center (DeIC) have jointly acquired the new supercomputer at a cost of DKK 40 million. It is estimated that the new computer, which is among the 150 largest supercomputers in the world, will have about 500 users from home and abroad.
The Danish Minister for Health, Mr Nick Hækkerup is convinced that the supercomputer will strengthen Denmark's standing in health research:
"I think this is very promising—being able to connect academia, DTU, with the medico industry, large enterprises, and the Danish hospital sector can really open up some interesting possibilities. Not merely in research, but also in the treatment of patients at the hospitals, and in the industry. Therefore, if you can break down barriers, if you can pull together and collaborate, then there is great potential for creating growth and jobs in Denmark."
The supercomputer will also be linked up to European research infrastructure ELIXIR.
ELIXIR is an infrastructure that brings together and coordinates many of Europe's leading bioinformatics resources—bringing together independent bioscience facilities to create an infrastructure whose contributors share responsibility for biological data delivery and management.
The goal of ELIXIR is to orchestrate the collection, quality control and archiving of large amounts of biological data produced by life science experiments.
Eleven countries are currently members of ELIXIR: Finland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, plus the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).