ICMR-NIV Pune inaugurates high performance computing facility

PUNE The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) launched its first High Performance Computing (HPC) facility at the ICMR–National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune on Saturday. The advanced system, named NAKSHATRA, was inaugurated by Dr Rajiv Bahl, secretary of the department of health research and director general of ICMR.
The facility has been developed under the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM) as part of a new project called 'High Performance Computing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Hub'. It is designed to boost the country's ability to process large volumes of genomic and bioinformatics data—an area that faced challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic due to limited computing resources.
Speaking at the inauguration, Dr Bahl praised the institute for its timely and strategic step towards 'Viksit Bharat 2047' vision by strengthening the country's genomic surveillance and data analysis capacity. He highlighted how enhanced computing resources are crucial in preparing for technology driven pandemic preparedness and future public health emergencies.
Dr Naveen Kumar, director, ICMR-NIV, emphasized the critical role the HPC cluster will play in supporting rapid, data-driven responses to outbreaks.
The newly commissioned HPC cluster features twelve compute nodes, offering a total of 700 cores and 1 petabyte of storage. The infrastructure is tailored to support complex bioinformatics workflows including next-generation sequencing (NGS), transcriptomics, phylogenetics, metagenomics, and structural bioinformatics. Initially, the facility will serve five ICMR institutes across the country, acting as a central repository for sequencing data and extending support to Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs) in the near future. This makes the Pune-based institute a critical hub for outbreak investigations and pandemic preparedness, with the potential to accelerate AI-driven drug and vaccine discovery.

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