BioExcel Activities

Summer School

The BioExcel Centre of Excellence for Computational Biomolecular Research (BioExcel CoE) has been actively involved in supporting the biomolecular simulation community for many years now. The BioExcel Summer School, which targets early-stage researchers, is one of the centre’s most successful initiatives. To get a feel for the school, see the video: www. youtube.com/watch?v=BTB1J4S_cAU .

The school has been run very successfully multiple times between 2018 and 2024, and, as per tradition, it took place in Sardinia, Italy as an on- site event at the research-hub Sardegna Ricerche (also known as the Sardinian Agency for Research and Technology Development). This year’s summer school ( bioexcel.eu/events/summer-school-on-biomolecular-simulations-2024 ) covered topics like molecular dynamics simulations, biomolecular docking, free energy calculations, advanced sampling methods, and BioExcel Building Blocks (BioBB). This year we also had guest lectures on quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics and AlphaFold. In addition, there were poster and career sessions.

This year there were thirty participants at the school who represented fifteen European countries and seventeen nationalities. The lecturers and participants were asked to introduce themselves on the BioExcel forum well in advance to break the ice and promote future interactions. To aid the poster-related discussion and future collaboration, we asked for the posters to be uploaded with their abstracts on the forum and we had flash talks, where the participants were asked to introduce themselves and pitch their posters. The school received an excellent average overall rating. The next BioExcel Summer School will run from 8-13 June 2025 ( bioexcel.eu/events/summer-school-on-biomolecular-simulations-2025 ). See you in Sardinia next June!

2nd BioExcel Conference

The 2nd BioExcel Conference on Advances in Biomolecular Simulations was held in the beautiful city of Brno, Czech Republic, from 20–23 October. The biomolecular research community gathered to explore the latest trends, updates and challenges in the fields of integrative modelling, free energy and drug design, workflows, automation and data integration. The line-up of invited speakers, all top scientists in their respective fields, provided a comprehensive programme. Students had an opportunity to showcase their work during three poster sessions. The local organising partner, Scientifika, provided excellent facilities and gourmet catering and ensured the event ran smoothly. The conference culminated with a mesmerising presentation by Rommie Amaro in the local observatory, projecting striking biomolecular machinery images on the large ceiling. All the participants, students, speakers and guests told us over and over that: “This was the best conference I’ve ever been to!”.

BioExcel Initiatives

BioExcel has run a lot of initiatives to support the biomolecular simulation community and PDC has been a leader in many of them, including the Summer School and Ambassador Program.

Ambassador Program

The BioExcel Ambassador Program ( bioexcel.eu/about/governance/ambassador-program ) aims to establish strong connections with the local communities in EuroHPC and increase the uptake of high-performance computing (HPC) in general and BioExcel tools and expertise. One of the activities within the ambassador program is co-organising BioExcel workshops and training events tuned to the needs of the local communities. For this we have built a training portfolio ( bioexcel.eu/services/training ) and developed protocols to organise workshops in collaboration with National Competence Centres (NCCs) and local ambassadors. The next ambassador-driven workshop will take place in Coimbra in November ( bioexcel.eu/events/bioexcel-eurocc-workshop-in-portugal ).

BioExcel Webinars

The BioExcel webinar series ( bioexcel.eu/category/webinar ) features notable developments in the field of computational biomolecular research. Have a look at the playlist here: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzLqYW5ci-2fanl2RtYHyFvjftu_M4Jwy .

BioExcel Forums

The BioExcel forums ( ask.bioexcel.eu  and gromacs.bioexcel.eu ) are provided to support the research community.

Competency Hub

The BioExcel Competency Hub ( competency.ebi.ac.uk/framework/bioexcel/3.0 ) is available for browsing competencies, career profiles and training resources to advance your career.