The lab of Biomolecular Dynamics and Engineering of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Patras is strengthening its presence at the European research forefront. The lab secured two highly competitive access grants to MareNostrum5 (MN5) — one of Europe's most powerful exascale supercomputers, capable of performing 108 calculations per second. The grants, awarded through the EuroHPC JU scheme (https://www.eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/index_en), correspond to over 46 million hours of processing power, and their total value exceeds €1.2 million. This grant is at least 50 times larger than what is available to Greek scientists through the National Research and Technology Infrastructure Network (GrNET) per year. The Principal Investigator (PI) and Coordinator for both projects is Assistant Professor Vangelis Daskalakis, head of the Laboratory of Biomolecular Dynamics and Engineering.
The first project, SECure (EHPC-REG-2025R01-105), received a grant of 230,000 node hours on the MN5 General Purpose Partition, in collaboration with the University of Crete and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (IMBB-FORTH; Assoc. Professor Panagiotis Moschou). The goal is to understand the SEC14 proteins that regulate the response of plants to environmental stress, while simultaneously opening pathways for food security and potential medical applications, given the role of SEC14 in lipid homeostasis in the human body.
The second project, DALiA (EHPC-EXT-2025E01-070), secured a particularly significant grant of 255,160 node hours on the Accelerated MN5 (ACC) GPU partition (equipped with 4,480 NVIDIA graphics cards), in collaboration with leading research teams in Germany – Constructor University, Bremen (Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kleinekathoefer) and Spain – The Institute of Photonic Sciences (Dr. Nicoletta Liguori). This access will be used to achieve a “digital zoom” into the regulation of photosynthesis at the atomic level and its response to environmental pressures, combining classical molecular dynamics and advanced sampling techniques with machine learning. Collectively, these enormous computational resources will be made available to six (6) PhD candidates, allowing three (3) from Dr. Daskalakis' lab to conduct advanced biomolecular simulations. Through these efforts, the Department of Chemical Engineering is advancing fundamental understanding and innovation in critical areas such as sustainability, food security, and biotechnology, directly addressing the challenges of climate change.