We continue our tour of EuroHPC supercomputers with the HPC Vega system, hosted by IZUM in Maribor in Slovenia. Aleš Zemljak and Žiga Zebec from IZUM have kindly agreed to present Vega.

Aleš Zemljak will first give an overview of HPC Vega: “HPC Vega – Slovenian Peta-scale Supercomputer”. He will touch on the system’s design, architecture and installation, focusing on the most user-relevant basic concepts of High Performance Computing and their relation to HPC Vega.

Dr Žiga Zebec will then present “HPC Vega: Powering Scientific Discovery “, a talk focusing on the science that is conducted on HPC Vega, i.e. “use cases”.

Speakers

Dr. Žiga Zebec studied at the University of Vienna in Austria. He completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Ecology with a focus on microbial ecology. By studying microbial ecology, molecular microbiology and immunobiology, he obtained a Master of Science (MSc). He continued his education under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Christa Schleper and received his PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) for his dissertation on CRISPR systems. After completing his PhD, he completed further training (PostDoc) in the field of synthetic biology at the University of Manchester – Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB). Dr. Zebec worked as a research associate under the direct supervision of MIB director Prof. Dr. Nigel Scrutton on a BRRS-funded project called “Terpenosomes”, which was led by Prof. Dr. Eriko Takano. After returning to Slovenia, he worked briefly in a private biotech company, AciesBio. More recently, Dr. Zebec received funding for the CellD-synBio project from the Ministry of Education and the EU Cohesion fund. The CellD-synBio project was successfully completed at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maribor. Later that year, he joined the team of the Institute for Environmental Protection and Sensors (IOS d.o.o.) and worked as a senior scientist on enzymatic degradation of waste. In November 2023 he joined the team of HCP Vega. Dr.Zebec has published several scientific papers, authored reviews, presented papers at international conferences and participated in EU-funded projects.

Aleš Zemljak studied at the University of Maribor in Slovenia. He completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Throughout his professional career he worked as a Researcher, Teaching Assistant, Software Developer and HPC Development Engineer at the University of Maribor and the Institute of Information Science – IZUM, as well as the private sector. His interests include Computer Architecture and Design with focus on High Performance Computing, Programming Platforms, Paradigms and Models with focus on Parallel Processing, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms and Data Structures. Most recently he formed part of the Deployment
and Engineering teams of HPC Maister and (Euro)HPC Vega and is a member of the SLING Experts Forum. He coordinates Technical Support and Maintenance for HPC Vega.