IIT Delhi invites proposals for supercomputer-based COVID-19 research; Offers Rs 1 crore worth of computational time for FREE

Considering rising concern of COVID-19 spread in the nation, IIT Delhi has invited proposals from the government and private academic institutions as well as private companies in association with an academic partner from all over the country to use its supercomputer resource PADUM for COVID-19 research.

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.

The allocation period can be extended to six months after evaluating the performance of the projects.

Speaking about this initiative by the institute, Prof 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.”

The researchers have to submit their proposals by 15th April 2020. After the submission of proposals, experts from IIT Delhi will evaluate them on first come first serve basis.

After selection of the proposals, IIT Delhi will provide basic and limited support to them, which will include instructions on job submissions or smooth functioning of these projects.

Along with the above initiative, all researchers from India are also welcome to use supercomputer at IIT Delhi for COVID-19 research on payment basis. IIT Delhi will match to 2X the amount contributed for supercomputer (High Performance Computing-HPC) usage for COVID-19 research.

In this payment basis mode, the institute is allocating a budget of Rs 5 Cr worth of High Performance computational resource (Supercomputer) for the next 6 months.

For more details, please check Supercomputer @IITD: http://supercomputing.iitd.ac.in/

Here’s a glimpse of some of the ongoing supercomputer-based COVID-19 research works at IIT Delhi:

1. At IIT Delhi, researchers from Kusuma School of Biological Sciences and the Department of Chemistry are attempting to identify potential drug molecules against the novel coronavirus. These molecules are expected to interfere with different steps in the life cycle of the virus and prevent its proliferation. Researchers are searching through databases of existing drugs that can be repurposed, natural product libraries as well as new molecules.”

2. Single ventilator design modification for optimal multi-patient use – A Computational Fluid Dynamics study
The aim of this study by IITD researchers from Chemical Engineering Dept. and Centre of Energy Studies is to find a “Plug & Play” solution that caters to surge in demand for ventilators in the face of medical emergencies such as COVID-19; a design proposal to accommodate multiple patients on a single ventilator, thus increasing the ventilator capacity of our hospitals manifold, that too with minimalistic and easy design changes, which can be applied universally to all makes and builts of ventilators.