CHPC industry engagement meeting

In March, the CHPC met with 36 users from a number of private and public sector institutions to discuss their experiences withthe centre and how the centre can improve its service offering. The meeting was held at the CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria. 

The format of the meeting included active users providing a brief presentations on their experiences with the CHPC.  Presentations were given by: SA Weather Service, ESKOM, Mintek, Inqaba Biotec, Roche, Johnson Matthey, eScience, NECSA, PetroSA, the National Nuclear Regulator and the Agricultural Research Council.  These talks provided both current and prospective users the opportunity to develop a better understanding of what was involved in making productive use of the CHPC’s resources in non-academic environments. 

The presentations generally reflected a high degree of satisfaction with the performance of the Lengau cluster, as well as with the quality of support.  During group discussions, a data security concern was highlighted as an obstacle to more widespread commercial use of the centre’s resources. Nevertheless, it was evident that there was substantial growth in interest in large-scale modelling, simulation and data analysis for non-academic purposes. 

The next industry engagement meeting will take place during the 2017 edition of the annual CHPC user conference to be held in Pretoria in December.