Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre

04/08/2026

🔬 National Science Week is back next week from Saturday 15 to Sunday 23 August. We're hosting an Open Day on Thursday, 20 August to share the world of supercomputing, scientific research, and cutting-edge technology at Pawsey.

Whether you're part of a school group or a member of the public, discover how advanced computing is helping researchers tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges.

We have morning sessions for school groups – designed for school students and teachers – and an afternoon session that is open to the public. The event is open to anyone interested in science, technology, innovation, and research.

Register here: https://bit.ly/4w1dlKp

To find out what else is on near you – from mapping the night sky in the country to exploring the hidden life of seeds in the city – see the hundreds of events happening across WA: https://bit.ly/450HmPD.

03/08/2026

🚀 Pawsey Wrap of the Week

⚛️ Our CEO Mark Stickells travelled to Sydney to support the Australia-Japan collaboration in quantum computing at Australia–Japan Quantum Workshop – hosted by Quantum Australia and Q-STAR-Quantum STrategic Industry Alliance for Revolution )Q-STAR).

This event included Japan's Minister for Economic Security, Kimi Onoda, and leaders from government, research and industry. As part of our Letter of Intent, Pawsey is working with Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) G-QuAT to develop a quantum simulation that tackles the structure of an enzyme behind livestock methane emissions. This is one of the latest projects linking Japan and Australia together through this partnership.

Last week the Western Australian Science and Technology Council meeting took place. Mark joined, along with Chief Scientist of Western Australia Sharath Sriram, The Hon Stephen Dawson MLC, Minister for Science and Innovation and other members of the council. Discussions included the implementation of Western Australia’s 10-Year Science and Technology Plan.

💻 Mark also contributed an OpEd for InnovationAus.com about helping define the vocabulary around data centres, the cloud, AI and high performance computing. With these terms becoming more commonplace, there's an importance of knowing the role of each of these with Australia's science, economy and security.
Read the feature: https://bit.ly/4fVZjnA

✒️ On International Day of Friendship we held an Open Day for students, sharing a tour of Pawsey and how supercomputing comes into play in their daily lives. We had some great questions about careers, artificial intelligence, and pathways that involve supercomputing.

Beyond the tours, students explored the diverse career pathways in high performance computing, discovering that careers in the field span many disciplines – from AI and data science to engineering, visualisation, and research support.



[Additional photos were taken by Quantum Australia and James Arvanitakis]

31/07/2026

🦘 Perth hosts International HPC Summer School

For the first time in its 16 years of running, the International HPC Summer School came to the southern hemisphere to be hosted in Perth, Australia.

We welcomed the Hon. Dr Parwinder Kaur MLC – who launched the event on behalf of the Hon. Stephen Dawson MLC, WA Minister for Science and Innovation – and a very special keynote speaker, Professor Giuseppe Barca.

Staff from Pawsey and National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) were part of the mentor groups and session lecturers, guiding the students through topics both tech-heavy, and soft skills like resume building and what it's like to move countries for an opportunity.

Read more: https://bit.ly/3TpspUJ

30/07/2026

🖥️ Curious about supercomputing, but not sure if it’s the right fit for your research?

Join us for How to Get Access to Pawsey’s Setonix Supercomputer – a free online information session where you’ll learn:
- What Pawsey offers in compute, data and visualisation services
- How to prepare a strong allocation proposal
- What makes Setonix one of the world’s most powerful research tools

Led by Pawsey’s Head of Scientific Services, Dr. Maciej Cytowski, this session will help you decide whether supercomputing is right for you and how to get started.

📅 Date: Friday 7 August, 2026
🕐 Time: 10-11:30am (AWST)

Sign up: https://bit.ly/4h5bBMC

27/07/2026

🚀 Pawsey Wrap of the Week

📄 A Pawsey MVP
Our Training and Supercomputing Application Specialist Victor Olet received the Microsoft MVP Award for Azure HPC and AI Infrastructure. His award is one of only five Azure HPC MVPs worldwide, and currently the only one in the Asia–Pacific region. The award recognises Victor's work in scientific computing education, cloud HPC and community engagement – all alongside his role at Pawsey. He's pictured alongside his Windows Insider MVP Award from 2023 for contributions to Office 365 and Edge testing and development.

🔭 Representing Asia-Pacific
Our CEO Mark Stickells attended the group update of the HPC-AI Leadership Organization (HALO) – a user-based industry association of leaders of HPC and AI – of which he is Chair of the Asia-Pacific region. This included a presentation regarding the U.S. Genesis Mission and debrief of the ISC High Performance 2026 conference in Hamburg. Mark also joined the APAC AI and Sustainability Advisory Council meeting – a community of APAC-based business leaders. This council looks to find – and share – best practices in leveraging high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and sustainable technology in the Asia-Pacific region.

22/07/2026

🔍 New to Acacia?

Join our upcoming introductory session to learn how to use Acacia, Pawsey’s object storage service for research data.

Designed for new and prospective users, this course will cover the fundamentals of object storage and demonstrate how Acacia can support research data workflows.

Through practical examples and live demonstrations, participants will learn how to:
💠 Describe object storage and its benefits
💠 Set up your Acacia access credentials
💠 Store, retrieve, and share data using Acacia
💠 Understand common approaches for transferring and managing data in Acacia.

This session is ideal for researchers and project teams planning to use Pawsey data services.

Basic Linux/UNIX command-line knowledge is recommended.

📅 Register now: https://pawsey.org.au/events/getting-started-with-acacia-29-july-2026
Date: 29 July 2026
Time: 9:00AM – 2:30 PM (AWST, Perth time)

Read more about Acacia: https://pawsey.org.au/systems/acacia

»View details

20/07/2026

🚀 Pawsey Wrap of the Week

🔬 Three cheers for Early Career Excellence
We want to congratulate our Life Science Applications Specialist Sarah Beecroft for winning the 2026 Early Career eResearch Excellence Prize. This prize celebrates the input given in areas of research enablement, technical innovation, collaboration, and community leadership. Sarah's work in computational life sciences and helping others with projects has been recognised among an incredible collection of nominees. Learn more about her work: https://bit.ly/4vCoyB2

🎒 Studies and (new) buddies
We hosted the International HPC Summer School in Perth last week, the first time the program has come to the Southern Hemisphere. Dr Parwinder Kaur MLC launched the event on behalf of Stephen Dawson MLC. We welcomed delegates and a very special guest and keynote speaker Prof. Giuseppe Barca. Staff from Pawsey and National Computational Infrastructure were also part of the mentor groups, guiding the students through topics both tech-heavy, and soft skills like resume building and what it's like to move countries for an opportunity.

🌠 Celebrating the wins in research and innovation
We were thrilled to have been nominated for The Incite Awards in the Research and Development category for our Setonix-Q pilot program last month. The 35th INCITE Awards last Friday was a celebration of all the latest in tech and innovation, and we congratulate winner Hypatia, runner-up SmartWheel and the other nominees for their contributions to research.

✈️ Selamat datang, Malaysia
We welcomed a leadership delegation (supported by AIMWA) from Malaysia. Attendees asked some great questions, with Luke Edwards and CEO Mark Stickells on hand to share what sovereign infrastructure is like, and its importance for any nation to have.

💻 How to get time with Setonix
Edith Cowan University (ECU) students were invited to Pawsey to learn about the various ways supercomputing can help research and advance science. Hosted by Luke Edwards and Pawsey Champion Sean Buckley, visitors were shown the various ways to get access to these game-changing tools.

🔭 A new star arrives
We welcomed the new SKA Director-General, Professor Jessica Dempsey, with a visit and lunch at Pawsey. Jessica is a globally recognised radio astronomer and science leader who has worked at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and the East Asian Observatory.

14/07/2026

Imagine Australia in the early 2000s. The cost of world-class science: synchrotrons, supercomputers, national biobanks, telescopes, big data, was climbing fast. Australia faced a critical choice: how to build this scale of infrastructure without duplicating effort or pricing smaller institutions out?

The answer was collaboration. Twenty years ago, Australia chose to build it once, nationally, and share it.

Today, that $5.5 billion investment is helping predict extreme weather in minutes instead of hours, strengthen biosecurity at the border, improve cancer surgery outcomes, and design the next generation of cleaner technologies. Pawsey is proud to be part of this interconnected national network.

Some of what that investment has delivered:
🦠 Modernised border biosecurity
Australian BioCommons, enabled through Bioplatforms Australia, gave QUT and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry an automated system to identify plant viruses at the border faster and more consistently than manual screening.
🩺 Better cancer surgery outcomes
Advanced imaging infrastructure through the National Imaging Facility and Microscopy Australia helped Australian start-up Ferronova develop FerroTrace, improving 5-year survival for gastric and oesophageal cancer patients by up to 19%.
✈️ Smarter engines
Aircraft engines operate in extreme conditions that are impossible to fully test in a laboratory. Pawsey enabled supercomputing-powered simulations are helping industry understand engine performance at an unprecedented scale, accelerating the design of more efficient engines, lowering emissions, and advancing aviation technology worldwide.

And the scale behind it, in 2024–25 alone:
📊 100,000+ Australian users
📊 400+ delivery partnerships across universities, government, and industry
📊 $400M+ in co-investment from partners nationally

To mark the anniversary, the Department of Education has released a booklet showcasing the breadth of impact across the NCRIS network. Read it here: https://bit.ly/4gACnw4

The NCRIS Symposium, celebrating 20 years of collaboration and the impact of coordinated national investment, took place this month. For those who couldn’t attend, recordings from the sessions are now available: https://bit.ly/4pgKS1r

13/07/2026

🚀 Pawsey Wrap of the Week
Our week was a chance to host and share, giving visitors from federal government and other industries a better understanding of the kind of science that’s happening every day.

🎤 Yes Minister
We welcomed The Hon Julian Hill MP, Assistant Minister for International Education to Pawsey. His visit gave us the chance to showcase Pawsey’s national role, the impact of large-scale research computing, and the importance of sovereign compute capabilities.

Australia’s future research priorities rely on access to High Performance Computing, and we were glad to show the Assistant Minister what can be done to answer the challenging questions of the future.

🦘 Perth in Focus
We hosted the Committee for Perth, a not-for-profit organisation that celebrates Perth as a global region to live, work, invest and study. There was plenty of thoughtful conversations on capability, collaboration, and the future of innovation.

🌠 Mars Maps
AZoQuantum interviewed our CEO Mark Stickells and Curtin University’s Gretchen Benedix about the role of supercomputers in analysing Mars datasets (The Role of Supercomputers in Analysing Modern Mars Datasets (https://bit.ly/4vss4Of). We were fortunate enough to talk to Gretchen about her work mapping millions of craters on the surface of Mars on our podcast, HPC Hearts & Minds. Sharing her work is another example of how HPC can be used to answer questions we never thought possible before. Watch the full episode: https://bit.ly/4wIiPuv

🎒 School's in
We’re also Day 1 into the International HPC Summer School, held for the first time in the Southern Hemisphere. Keep an eye out this week for more information on how experts and eager students come together to discuss everything there is to know about HPC – from career choices to what it’s like to move to another country.

10/07/2026

From discovering supercomputing to helping build WA’s most reliable climate projections.

The journey of a researcher is often a journey of discovery, not only of science, but of the tools, communities and collaborations that make ambitious questions possible.

We are proud to see Pawsey's climate research community featured on the international stage at SC26, the world's largest and most influential supercomputing conference.

The article shares Sean Lam's journey into high-performance computing and his role in bringing together a computing coalition to support climate research in Western Australia and beyond.

It is a powerful example of the impact of national research infrastructure at multiple levels:

🌏 enabling research that addresses challenges of global importance;
🇦🇺 building Australian capability through collaboration and expertise;
👩‍🔬 supporting the next generation of researchers and computational scientists.

Behind every supercomputer is a community of people using it to answer complex questions. Sean's story is a reminder that infrastructure does more than accelerate research, it creates opportunities, builds careers and strengthens Australia's scientific capability.

Congratulations to Sean and everyone involved in this important work, and thank you to the SC26 team for sharing this story with the global HPC community.

Read the full story 👇
Sean Lam: Uniting a Computing Coalition for Climate Research • SC26 (https://bit.ly/4ybBsbv)

Sean shared with the HPC community how a two-person team delivered the most detailed statewide climate projections in Western Australia.