The Presidency of the Council of the EU works on a rotation basis, with each Member State holding the presidency for a period of six months. Bulgaria took the helm of the Council on 1 January.
The Bulgarian Presidency priorities revolve around 4 priority areas:
As part of the latter, the Presidency will focus on “enhancing the credibility and security of personal data in the digital space and the development of a European data-based economy”. In particular, emphasis will be placed on “strategic areas where the potential of digital research infrastructure can be put to the best use, as well as on wide and free access to publications and data, including through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and high-performance computing initiatives, such as EuroHPC”.
Such a focus does not come as a surprise for a country with a long history in high-performance computing (HPC). As showcased by the Commission in late December, Bulgaria is one of the most ambitious European countries to invest in HPC.
This is well exemplified by the activities carried out by the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which is a Sofia-based research institution established in 2008. NCSA’s mission is to provide a platform for discussion to bridge scientific and industrial perspectives. The Centre is involved in the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the DEEP – Extreme Scale Technologies project. In addition, NCSA operates the supercomputer Avitohol which supports applications in fields such as genomics, natural disaster prevention, weather forecasting, biomedicine, material science, drug testing, organ transplantation, molecular dynamics.
The article published by the Commission on 22 December entitled “Bulgaria – a country with a long history of achievements in High Performance Computing” is available here.
