The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has decided to allocate supercomputer resource for COVID-19 research. For this, the institute has invited research proposals from government and private academic institutions as well as private companies in association with an academic partner from all over the country.
Selected institutes will be allowed to use IIT Delhi's supercomputer resource PADUM for COVID-19 research.
"Considering rising concern of COVID-19 spread in the nation, IIT Delhi is committing a total of INR 1 crore worth of High Performance Computing (HPC) Resource for COVID-19 research to merit based proposals selected from a nationwide call of proposals," said the institute.
"Under this, allocation of supercomputer resource to merit based proposals will be made for three months and a total of Rs 1 Cr worth of computational time will be provided to them for free. Each proposal will have a maximum cap of Rs 10 lakh worth of computational resource," said an official statement from IIT Delhi.
Speaking about this initiative by the institute, Professor V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi said: "In these difficult times, sharing of resources is important in order to address the infrastructure requirements of researchers working on the Corona epidemic. IIT Delhi has taken a principled stand and wishes to set an example for this. It is important for scientists to collaborate with each other given the urgency of the situation."
Initially it will be allocated for three months and can be extended to six months after evaluating the performance of the projects.
IIT Delhi has asked institutes to submit their proposals by April 15.
The institute invites researchers across the country to use the supercomputer for COVID-19 research on payment basis.
