The Serbian Deputy Prime Minister for EU Integration and Minister of Science and Technological Development Bozidar Djelic stated today that Serbia has been admitted into the Partnership for Advanced Computing (PRACE). Djelic noted that Serbia is only the second country from South East Europe to be admitted into PRACE.
The PRACE project is currently chaired by Spain and its Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Djelic thanked Spain for its assistance regarding Serbias admission to PRACE.
The Deputy Prime Minister gave the announcement during his joint visit with the Spanish Ambassador to the Institute of Physics in Belgrade (IPB). IPB has been appointed by the Mininstry of Science and Technological Development to represent Serbia in European initiatives such as PRACE aimed at the creation of Pan-European high performance computing services.
The high profile visit to IPB launched a seven year National Supercomputing Initiative whose goal is the creation of the Blue Danube Supercomputing Facility at IPB's Danube campus. Djelic stated that the 10 million project will be jointly funded by the Serbian Government and EU funds.
The Deputy Prime Minister stated that advanced computing networks enable Europe to compete with the US, China and Japan. According to him, the world's top supercomputers are used not only in basic research but also in key commercial applications. Blue Danube is therefore expected to pave the way to joint R&D projects with large companies such as Airbus, IBM and Microsoft. According to Djelic the global economic crisis will not influence the development of sciences in Serbia, and that cutting-edge facilities such as Blue Danube are necessary in order to attract the most talented researchers to Serbia.
His Excellency Ambassador Inigo Palacio de Espana said that this is a very important day for Serbia and its European future. He applauded Serbia's effort to take part in this high-tech R&D effort. In his oppinion Serbia has the necessary expertise to tackle this ambitious task. To illustrate this he noted that 17 Serbian scientists are already working at Barcelona's Mare Nostrum Supercomputing Facility.
