The Barcelona Supercomputing Center opens it new corporate headquarters, the BSC-REPSOL Building

Reportaje

07/10/2021

Catalonia's Regional Minister of Research and Universities, the Secretary General for Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Rector of the UPC, and the Chairman of the Repsol Foundation took part in the official opening ceremony for the new building. A new 12,000 m2 facility for 530 of the center’s workers.

Inauguración del BSC-Repsol Building, sede corporativa del Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Antonio Brufau (Presidente de Repsol); Mateo Valero ( Director del BSC-CNS), Gemma Geis (Consejera de Investigación y Universidades del Gobierno de la Generalitat de Cataluña), Raquel Yotti (Secretaria general de investigación del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación), Daniel Crespo (Rector de la UPC)

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS, for its initials in Spanish) has moved into its new corporate headquarters, the BSC-REPSOL Building, at Plaza Eusebi Güell 1-3 in Barcelona. Catalonia's Regional Minister of Research and Universities, Gemma Geis; the Secretary General for Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Raquel Yotti; the rector of the UPC, Daniel Crespo; the chairman of the Repsol Foundation, Antonio Brufau, and the director of the BSC-CNS, Mateo Valero, took part today in a short ceremony to celebrate the opening of what is already one of the major scientific and technological facilities in the city of Barcelona.

The new headquarters of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center is a 12,000 m2 building with four office floors, 530 workstations, 35 meeting rooms, two classrooms, an auditorium, and a number of meeting points to encourage the exchange of knowledge between researchers. Two-thirds of the BSC staff will work at its headquarters and the rest, up to 765 workers, are housed in nearby buildings, which, like the BSC-REPSOL Building, are located in the Torre Girona gardens.

The BSC-REPSOL Building cost 19.6 million euros and was funded by the center’s sponsors (Ministry of Science and Innovation, Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), and the collaboration of the Repsol Foundation and the European Development Funds (FEDER).

The new BSC-CNS is connected by a walkway to what has been to date the center's most emblematic building, the Torre Girona, which currently houses the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer. In the basement, a new supercomputer room is being built, which will allow the installation of more supercomputing infrastructure with greater capacity, such as the future MareNostrum 5. When this occurs, the Torre Girona chapel will remain an iconic space that can be visited, where supercomputing infrastructure and top-level data will be housed.

The director of BSC-CNS, Mateo Valero, noted that “This new building symbolizes, in a way, how the BSC-CNS has grown in the 15 years it has been in existence” and said that “one of its vital contributions is to permit greater interaction between the more than 600 researchers at the center, who until recently were spread out over a variety of buildings and now will have meeting points where they can exchange ideas and experiences, and create new synergies, with all that this means for knowledge creation"".

The Regional Minister of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Gemma Geis, emphasized the ""strategic role played by the BSC-CNS as a catalyst for international cutting-edge research and an engine for technological transfer and innovation for the economy of Catalonia”.

The Secretary General for Research, Raquel Yotti, said that the “Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Center is a leading center in Europe and Spain for supercomputing initiatives. In Europe, it leads the Spanish contributions to initiatives that seek to advance towards European digital sovereignty. In Spain, since 2007, the BSC has been the coordinator and head of the Spanish Supercomputing Networking, in which 13 nodes, spread across 11 Autonomous Regions, collaborate to provide computing and data services to the research community. The Spanish government's firm commitment to providing 60% of the funding for the center, together with the contributions from the Generalitat de Catalunya and the UPC, have made it possible to make significant investments in the MareNostrum supercomputers.

For the rector of the UPC, Daniel Crespo, “the BSC-CNS is a source of pride for the country and the UPC. It gives me great satisfaction to see how a project conceived at the UPC over 20 years ago has achieved the maximum level of excellence and worldwide scientific competitiveness. The scientific research being conducted at the BSC benefits the UPC, Catalonia, Spain, and humanity as a whole”.

In his speech, Antonio Brufau noted that the BSC-REPSOL Building is a unique space, associated with technology and innovation, and emphasized the key role that science plays in the development and construction of a modern, inclusive society. The BSC and Repsol have been cooperating on a variety of projects since 2007 and in 2011 they created a joint research center to develop cutting-edge energy-related technology.