Powering Discovery, Sharing Success, and Building Community
Dear Name,
April was an outward‑facing month at Pawsey – from quantum conferences and international partnerships to our open days and schools visits.
We welcomed Champion Bay High School students to Pawsey to see where data from the nearby Murchison Radio Observatory is processed and analysed.
April brought inspiring examples of HPC in action with the release of the second HPC Hearts & Minds podcast episode featuring Curtin University’s Professor Gretchen Benedix. Her work mapping craters on Mars demonstrates how supercomputing transforms research, scaling a task that once took six years into a 24-hour calculation that identified 94 million craters.
Our CEO Mark Stickells engaged across forums and roundtables including HALO, CEDA, and joint engagements with NCI in Canberra. We also celebrated progress in inclusive education at an event for the Beazley Academy, highlighting the value of creating accessible pathways into science and technology.
On the quantum front, World Quantum Day saw almost 80 community members visit Pawsey for our Open Day. Ongoing planning with Japan’s G‑QuAT quantum centre is reinforcing our role as sovereign national research infrastructure at the forefront of advanced computing.
Over the past few weeks, our team has been actively contributing to national and international conversations on high‑performance computing, data, AI, and quantum technologies, while strengthening partnerships that support Australia’s research future.
We had visits from ARDC, WEHI and AARNet, and continued engagement with Western Australian universities and research institutes.
We launched the second episode of HPC Hearts & Minds, this time with astro-geologist Gretchen Benedix from Curtin University.
Grechen's work mapping the craters of the Moon and on Mars have given us not only incredible visuals of the surface, but a better understanding the planets and moons in our solar system.
Taking six years' worth of manually counting 385,000 craters on Mars, Gretchen used High Performance Computing to map 94 million craters in 24 hours.
The conference provides a platform for sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and advancing excellence across our interdisciplinary community.
In line with this year’s theme, Celebrating Our Past, Shaping Our Future, we welcome abstracts that reflect on 20 years of eResearch achievements or showcase innovative programs, practical case studies, and emerging ideas shaping its future.
Have any teenage children that are curious about big data, supercomputers, and cutting-edge technology?
Let their teachers know they can join us at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre for an exciting Open Day designed especially for high school students.
Get an introduction to Pawsey and the world of supercomputing, discover one of Australia’s most powerful supercomputers and hear from experts about careers in STEM.
APAC Open OnDemand Tips & Tricks Community: Q&A session and event updates
18 May 2026 – Online
Join Do IT Now's monthly call series for the Open OnDemand Asia Pacific (APAC) community to learn practical tips for using this powerful, web-based platform that gives you seamless access to HPC resources.
* Proven configurations that deliver for end users
* UI and workflow tweaks, plus a look at new apps
* Operational takeaways from real day-to-day usage
NCI-supported research to uncover Earth’s hidden processes earns Dr Mark Hoggard a national science honour
How do hidden processes deep within the Earth shape sea-level rise, resource discovery, and even global security?
Dr Mark Hoggard (ANU), recipient of the Anton Hales Medal, is using NCI’s high-performance computing to answer exactly that. His research reveals why sea-level rise isn’t uniform, and why some regions could face impacts up to 25% higher than the global average.
From improving climate projections to guiding critical mineral exploration, this is science with real-world impact, made possible by advanced computational power.
Read the full story and watch his work in the video, courtesy of the Australian Academy of Science.
Assistant Minister Julian Hill visits NCI
NCI recently welcomed Hon Julian Hill MP, Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and Assistant Minister for International Education, for a behind-the-scenes look at one of Australia’s most powerful supercomputing facilities.
He was welcomed by NCI Director Prof Andrew Rohl, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre CEO Mark Stickells AM, and former Australian Academy of Science CEO Anna-Maria Arabia OAM, who highlighted the critical role of national-scale computing and data in driving research, innovation, and economic growth.
The conversations during the visit underscored the strategic importance of sustained public investment in Australia's high-performance computing and data infrastructure and skills, and the national facilities’ role in translating that capability into research outcomes, skilled jobs, and growth.
This collection brings together key datasets that support deep learning models for molecular structure prediction. Australian BioCommons, UNSW Sydney and NCI staff developed it through targeted collaboration.
NCI thanks Andrew Robinson, Associate Director - Data Management, and the NCI Data Collections team, along with Matthew Downton, Associate Director - HPC Performance Optimisation, for enabling this capability at scale.
Chasing Fireballs in the Outback: The Great Drone Meteorite Hunt
In Western Australia’s vast outback, researchers are combining drones, AI, the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud and Pawsey’s supercomputing services to help search for billion-year-old meteorites.
Finding a meteorite in the vast Australian outback is like looking for a needle in a haystack – except the needle is a small black rock and the haystack stretches for hundreds of hectares.
In an ARDC case study, researchers from Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network are using advanced technology and national research infrastructure to dramatically improve the odds.
By combining autonomous drones, machine learning, and the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud, the team transformed meteorite recovery from a slow, manual search into a data‑driven operation.
The Desert Fireball Network developed the Drone Meteorite Search Platform, which rapidly processes and ranks thousands of images to guide field teams – finding meteorites and not gumnuts or kangaroo poo.
Powered by the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud, and supported by Pawsey and Astronomy Australia, the platform is enabling discoveries that help scientists unlock clues about the origins of our solar system without the billion‑dollar cost of a space mission.
It’s a powerful example of how cutting‑edge digital infrastructure is accelerating discovery, right here on Earth.
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