Arsenios Chatzigeorgiou

What does a biologist do inside a supercomputer facility?

In order to answer the question, I have to introduce myself first.

Hello, I am Arsenios Chatzigeorgiou, I am 27 years old and I have graduated from the Biology Department in Athens, Greece.

During my high school years, I was very fascinated with almost every science field that came to my view. Maths, physics, chemistry and biology, but at one point I had to choose a field to study.

During my graduate degrees in biology, in a course about bioinformatics, I got really excited writing my first scripts. I remember it felt like a child playing in the playground. It was therefore a no brainer choice that I would continue my studies in a more informatics field, enter, Master’s degree in Biomedical Data Science. In all those years however, I was very excited to learn stuff about other sciences.

So, we reached at the point where during my Master studies, I first learned about the PRACE program, and the use of HPC in science and research. I learned that HPC has made it possible to simulate and visualize complicated biological and physical processes. When I heard the great opportunity the PRACE program offers to young scientists, with the Summer of HPC, I was determined to do my best to be a part of that. The fact that there was a project that offered me the opportunity to work on a more physics related subject, was also a big plus. So, around April, when I was informed that I was selected for a project about visualization I was extremely happy and hyped about the exciting summer.

Indeed, the summer came and this week, from the first of July, I am in Bologna, Italy along with all the SoHPC participants, getting the necessary training for the use of HPC. Next week I am going to be in Slovenia, in the University of Ljubljana at the LECAD (Laboratory for Engineering Design) team. There, I’ll try to visualize some gyrokinetic data using an open source Python library.

Pardon my long story, but get ready because next week I am going to describe the learning outcome and the awesome training experience, here in Bologna, Italy.

Stay tuned!