Putting the “super” on supercomputers

INESC TEC Science Bits – Episode 17

Link to episode (in Portuguese)

Invited speakers:

João Paulo, HASLab – High-Assurance Software Laboratory

Ricardo Macedo, HASLab – High-Assurance Software Laboratory

Keywords: supercomputers| advanced computing | research | innovation | software

The world of proteins is complicated. These biomolecules present different, and quite complex structures. In medicine, understanding what proteins are like inside a human body is important to advance disease studies and promote the creation of new drugs. But given this complexity, researchers haven’t been able to fully simulate what every protein in the human body looks like – until now. DeepMind, a Google company, recently published in Nature a model that can predict the structure of all proteins in the human body. It’s called AlphaFold2 and many say that this is a historical moment for structural biology.

This important milestone is only possible thanks to supercomputers, and this month’s Science Bits is about the superpowers of supercomputing – and the challenge of managing these machines. João Paulo and Ricardo Macedo – researchers from INESC TEC and Universidade do Minho – at the High-Assurance Software Laboratory, discuss their experience.