The project formally began in April 2015. By October 2015, the fifteen fellowship positions were filled by highly-qualified candidates, the EJD framework was in place and each Fellow formulated a detailed career development plan to ensure the smooth and timely implementation of the programme. Around the same time, the Fellows started receiving their formal training.
To date, HPC-LEAP organised four core three-week workshops offering a well-balanced mixture of general knowledge on HPC architectures and algorithmic design. Moreover, three elective, weeklong workshops took place. Further training was provided depending on the specific needs of the fellows and following a consultation with their academic supervisors. The fellows have also broadened their research experience, by liaising with leading scientists through secondments to partner academic institutions and industrial partners, by receiving further training and having access to state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies.
The projects carried out by the fellows used cutting-edge HPC algorithms and infrastructure to address scientific problems from the Life Sciences, Engineering and Physics thus delivering the objectives of the project. The fellows developed a clear understanding of how to efficiently program a variety of computer architectures and what features to exploit for best performance in research in the thematic areas of the project. Forty eight scientific publications resulted from the research of the fellows and thirty talks were delivered at international meetings.
The fellows also received training in transferable skills and in particular presenting their results. All of the fellows presented their work in conferences and other international meetings and participated in numerous outreach activities advocating HPC and advertising the activities of HPC-LEAP to the general public. This includes representing HPC-LEAP at the European Researchers' Night in 2016-2018, as well as participating in Univ. Open Days.