Their work, UCHPC - UnConventional High Performance Computing for Finite Element Simulations, was selected by the ISC'08 Award Committee, headed by Michael Resch, High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart. Achim Bachem, Chairman of the Board Forschungszentrum Jülich and PRACE coordinator presented the PRACE Award at the ISC’08 opening ceremony in Dresden on Wednesday, 18 June. Dominik Göddeke, Ph.D. student in the team of Professor Stefan Turek will receive a sponsorship for the participation in a conference relevant to Petascale computing.

Professor Turek and his team conduct research in numerical methods for Partial Differential Equations, with applications in engineering- and life-sciences such as fluid-structure interaction, multiphase fluidics and haemodynamics. To accomplish complex simulations, special hardware-oriented numerical techniques are developed, for instance the use of unconventional hardware like graphics processors known from computer games.

This is the first time the prize is awarded. The PRACE Award will be continued in the years to come to encourage young European scientists to work on innovative solutions for Petascale computing.