European project focusing on strategic research infrastructures convenes in Budapest
SLICES-SC consortium members gathered with Hungarian stakeholders in Budapest to discuss the working plan for the last period of the EU H2020 project. HUN-REN SZTAKI hosted partners from 10 European countries, working towards reinforcing the international research infrastructure community.
SLICES-SC (Scientific Large-scale Infrastructure for Computing/Communication Experimental Studies Starting Communities) is a 42-month-long project that aspires to organise and engage the community around the users of digital science research infrastructures and address the key issues for providing the SLICES infrastructure to a larger audience and opening up to new disciplines and industrial stakeholders.
Participants of the Budapest meeting were greeted by local stakeholders, who support the SLICES Research Infrastructure (RI) acclaimed by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2021. First, László Lengyel, vice president for science and international affairs from the National Research Development and Innovation Office explained how the notion of SLICES-RI fits in the Hungarian R&D&I strategy and ecosystem and the instruments available to support such RIs. Then, Róbert Lovas, advisor of HUN-REN Headquarters presented HUN-REN’s approach towards RIs including the HUN-REN Cloud, which is integrated into SLICES-RI.
Finally, two Hungarian Open Call winners gave a brief introduction to their experiments that benefitted from SLICES-RI. Dr Zoltan Juhász (University of Pannonia) developed multi-GPU EEG signal processing algorithms for analysing brain activity on the SLICES-SC RI. At the same time, Marcell Szabó (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) described his experiment about autonomous transportation-related 5G research at EURECOM facilities. Both experimenters took advantage of the mobility grants SLICES-SC provides to arrange an on-site visit to the required infrastructure. The Mobility of Researchers Programme had already several beneficiaries, for more information please consult the project’s website.
Based on the outcome of the meetings it is fair to say that SLICES-SC expects to have a relatively active period since the project has to fine-tune the exploitation plan, organize hackathons and populate the SLICES Academy portal. Furthermore, The project will soon announce its upcoming summer school targeting PhD students that will take place from 08 July to 12 July in Italy, on the largest of the Aeolian islands, Lipari Island. SLICES-SC liaised with the Lipari "J.T. Schwartz International School for Scientific Research” which has extensive experience organizing PhD summer schools on various topics in computer science, advanced networking, biology, complex systems, etc. This year’s PhD school theme will be: Open and Programmable 6G Networks in the Cloud/Edge Continuum: Research Challenges and Experimentation Tools in SLICES Research Infrastructures. The details are published on the summer school’s landing page.
