Nanoscience Institute of the National Research Council (Cnr Nano) is glad to announce its participation in the upcoming HANAMI project, aimed at bolstering collaboration between Europe and Japan in the field of High-Performance Computing (HPC).

The HANAMI project, officially launching with a kickoff meeting in Paris on April 23,  is a three-year collaboration involving 14 European research institutions, funded by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking as part of the Horizon Europe program. The project aims to enhance the development and performance of European and Japanese High-Performance Computing applications by harnessing the collective skills and expertise of the scientific communities in both regions.

HANAMI, the HPC Alliance for Applications and Supercomputing Innovation, focuses on applications in the domains of climate and weather modelling, biomedical applications and materials science developments, in relevant research areas that can benefit from closer collaboration in the development of HPC applications. The main objective of HANAMI will be porting existing codes and testing and evaluating application performance on new computing architectures. It will also facilitate access for European researchers to advanced supercomputing resources like Fugaku and, in turn, will enable Japanese partners to access EuroHPC systems.

The HANAMI European consortium, led by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), brings together research teams exemplifying excellence in HPC, including Italian partners CINECA and the National research Council (CNR). Cnr Nano, as the main partner from the CNR, is primarily involved in Work Package 6 dedicated to material design. There are several key objective in WP6 including conducting research on sustainable materials for energy production and storage. WP6 also aims to advance and exchange optimized codes between Europe and Japan, tailored for optimal performance on cutting-edge systems such as EuroHPC and Riken's pre-exa and exa-scale supercomputers. Daniele Varsano from Cnr Nano serves as the Principal investigator for CNR, while Elisa Molinari (from Unimore and Cnr nano)  co-leads the WP6 pillar devoted to frontier simulations of materials.

HANAMI scientific projects have been designed jointly with esteemed Japanese partners, including RIKEN and University of Tokyo, among others, and embracing the European HPC application communities, represented by the European Centers of Excellence (CoEs). As for the materials science area, the MaX Center of Excellence contributed to the definition of the project by promoting and coordinating actions on Computational Materials Design and leading collaborations among key players in Europe and Japan on Materials simulations.

The HANAMI project represents a significant step towards advancing global collaboration in the field of HPC applications between Europe and Japan, with Cnr Nano playing a pivotal role in driving innovation and excellence in material design research.

The HANAMI European partners are: Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA, France), Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC, Spain), CINECA (Italy), National Research Council of Italy (CNR, Italy), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, France), CSC - IT Center for Science (Finland), Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ, Germany), University of Stuttgart (USTUTT, Germany), Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2, Spain), Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering Technology and Science (INESC TEC, Portugal), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, Sweden), Deutsche Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ, Germany), European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF, EU) and University of Warsaw (UW, Poland).