Towards a European Training Network in Scientific Computing

The mission of the PRACE, which stands for "the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe", Research Infrastructure is to enable high-impact, computation-driven scientific discovery and industrial R&D across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society.

PRACE creates a pan-European Research Infrastructure for scientific computing and modeling; providing access to computing and data management resources and services for large-scale scientific and engineering applications at the highest performance level. PRACE has 21 member countries. Through the broad participation of European governments through representative organizations a diversity of resources can be provided by the PRACE RI including expertise throughout Europe in effective use of the resources. PRACE encourages collaboration with industry and industrial use and seeks to strengthen the European HPC industry through various initiatives. The PRACE RI is established as an international non-profit association with seat in Brussels, having its foundation in a series projects funded by EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), of which the first begun on 2008 and the last implementation phase project will end on 2014.

To aid users and potential users as well as preparing the next generation scientists and engineers PRACE has an extensive pan-European education and training effort. These promote the effective use of the RI through face-to-face training events and scientific and industrial seminars all around Europe. PRACE also builds on an online Training Portal, which features ambitious features for self-learning, provides training material and distributes the materials (lecture videos, presentation slides and so on) of PRACE training events. A unique characteristic in PRACE training efforts is the network of "PRACE Advanced Training Centres", which are the European hubs for scientific computing education.

The presenter is the head of education and outreach at CSC, the Finnish IT center for science, and has been in charge of the PRACE training and education activities throughout the project. This presentation addresses the initiatives for a fully functional pan-European trainining network for scientific computing, related technological solutions, as well as discusses the lessons learned during the course of work.