Launch of the Upgraded High-Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster at the African Centers of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Data-Intensive Science

Executive Director of The Infectious Diseases Institute, Dr. Andrew Kambugu
NIH Representative in Uganda, Dr. Steven Reynolds
Head of Research, IDI, Dr. Barbara Castelnuovo
Director, ACE, Dr. Daudi Jjingo
Makerere University college, ACE workers, IDI workers, college students, and esteemed friends

All protocols noticed.

Good morning.  It is an honor to affix you in opening the upgraded High Performance Computing Cluster of the Ugandan African Centers of Excellence (ACE) in Bioinformatics and Data-Intensive Sciences.

Facilitated by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in collaboration with analysis establishments in Africa, personal sector corporations, and the Foundation for the NIH, the first ACE opened its doorways in 2015 at the University of Sciences, Techniques, and Technologies in Bamako, Mali.

In 2019,­ in collaboration with the Infectious Disease Institute and Makerere University, the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) opened the authentic Ugandan middle, which has shortly expanded in infrastructure, workers, college students skilled and quantity of analysis packages it helps.  This is having super affect on Uganda’s biomedical and well being analysis.

Pathogens comparable to malaria, TB, HIV, Ebola, and different infectious ailments have disproportionately affected African nations. Non-communicable ailments like diabetes and most cancers are additionally on the rise. High-performance computing and high-throughput knowledge evaluation are important instruments for enabling analysis and coaching to develop the medication, vaccines, and public well being companies to fight the unfold of these ailments in Africa and the relaxation of the world.  We are all safer for it.

The United States authorities acknowledges {that a} wholesome inhabitants is the basis for security, safety, and prosperity. In 2002, NIH established the International Centers for Excellence in Research (ICER) to develop and maintain analysis packages in sub-Saharan Africa by means of partnerships with native scientists.  The ICER web site in Uganda conducts medical analysis on HIV and different sexually transmitted infections, together with research on viral pathogenesis, remedy, and prevention.

Building upon the relationship already established by the ICER, over the final six years, the first ACE has loved quite a few profitable outcomes together with: collaborations with worldwide tutorial establishments, a number of grants, displays at scientific conferences, and graduating a number of cohorts of  bioinformatics Master’s and PhD college students who at the moment are impartial researchers with peer-reviewed publications and new roles as college and researchers.

Several analysis packages are additionally leveraging the ACE amenities, together with a devoted telelearning-capable classroom, a visualization lab that includes digital reality-based coaching, collaborative house for session and undertaking planning, and vital IT infrastructure.

By bettering the science and understanding of infectious ailments at their supply, Uganda is growing the stage of analysis and the high quality of knowledge collected by means of collaboration with investigators in the United States and round the world—making us all more healthy.

Maintaining and constructing this collaborative analysis capital requires that the medical and scientific communities have entry to, and familiarity with, the superior computational instruments.

In this spirit, by means of persevering with efforts of NIH/NIAID and a beneficiant donation of new state-of-the-art High-Performance Computing infrastructure from the University of Texas at Austin, it’s an honor immediately to launch the new up to date HPC at ACE!

The up to date ACE’s 55 new computing nodes will dramatically improve each storage and computational capability greater than five-fold.  Further reinforcing this ACE as the prime computational analysis middle in Uganda.

This improved capability will advance our understanding of the nature of infectious ailments and the improvement remedies to fight the unfold of these infectious ailments all through the world.  Making the Uganda, the United States, and the world safer.

Billions of individuals rely on the scientific discoveries that you’ll make right here, as a result of as everyone knows, ailments don’t respect borders.  Thank you in your partnership with the United States in advancing very important scientific data and continued analysis enabled by this newly upgraded Center.