The Times of India (Pune)
February 14, 2017

Supercomputing need not be an alien subject for a molecular biologist or even a meteorological scientist for long.

The 2017-18 academic year, will offer MTech in high performance computing (HPC) and data sciences (DS) along with many shortand medium-term courses on HPC in 29 institutes across the country.

To make supercomputing more accessible to people in different fields of research, a meeting of National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) experts' group on human resource development, chaired by Jaya Panvalkar, and board of go vernors, SVNIT, Surat, was held at C-DAC in the city on February 7. Representatives from IITs, IISc, NITs, IIITs, IISERs, central universities, ministry of HRD, department of science and technology and C-DAC participated in the meeting.

Panvalkar, who is also chairperson of SVNIT, said, “This is a seven-year mission and we plan to train at least 20,000 people in this field within that period. The 29 institutes where the programme will start will include eight IITs, IISc, nine NITS, three IIITs, five central universities, and three IISERs.“

Panvalkar said, “There will be six to 10 short term courses of one to four we eks' duration per year. The medium term courses co uld be of six months long.

The long term courses will be of one or two years. A cer tificate will be awarded by the respective universities after comple E tion of the course.“

Panval kar said the HPC courses will also be made available in state uni versities and other institu tes provided they have the necessary infrastructure and faculty. Students will have to appear for GATE to enrol in MTech. “This year onwards, MTech in HPC and DS will start in the engi neering colleges, while introductory and advanced courses in HPC will be offered to BTech students,“ she added.

Ashish Kuvelkar, associate director, HPC-Tech, CDAC, said, “Our focus is not on computer science graduates but on other students.HPC is useful in various specialized fields. A meteorological scientist will have the know-how of his field and its various methodologies but may not have the understanding of HPC. But if he is given training, he will be able to use HPC to further his research in predicting the weather more accurately. Likewise, HPC can be used in all scientific research.“