February 2026

PAWSEY POST

Powering Discovery, Sharing Success, and Building Community

Dear Name,

Welcome to the new year!

For our first newsletter of 2026 has a bit more to cover as we look back at the last six weeks. The year started with international visibility, focusing in building relationships and responding to the growing demand for supercomputing in Australia.

Our Pawsey interns are readying for their Summer Internship Showcase – sharing their findings over the last 12 weeks. These projects cover a multitude of topics, and is open for anyone to attend next Friday.

Applications for the International HPC Summer School (IHPCSS) 2026 have closed, with an incredible amount of people sending their interest to join. For the first time, the IHPCSS is being held in the Southern Hemisphere, and Pawsey is hosting it.

We hosted a Nectar operator training session with our colleagues from the ARDC – who travelled from the east coast of Australia. This training was aimed at supporting platform staff who are responsible for operating our new Pawsey ARDC Nectar Research Cloud Node since its launch in December.

Our Quantum Supercomputing Researcher Lead Pascal Elahi, Manager Partner Relations Aditi Subramanya and Senior Storage Systems Administrator Team Lead Chris Schlipalius attended the SCA/HPCAsia 2026 in Osaka, Japan. Running a series of workshops and talks, the three were able to share their learnings and knowledge with the wider community.

We announced an international collaboration between Australia and Japan. Our Letter of Intent with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) aims to strengthen scientific cooperation in quantum computing.

Our CEO Mark Stickells participated in a webinar for a new OECD report on national strategies and policies for quantum technologies. This offered a useful overview of the approaches countries are taking to quantum policy and investment, as well as Australia.

Given the growing demand for supercomputing across the country, the future of HPC has been a central theme – with discussions from our leadership team highlighting the importance of providing researchers with sustain access to supercomputing resources.

There’s a lot more in the pipeline to talk about in the coming months, but for now if you'd like to see something new in our newsletter, feel free to reach out.

Japan Quantum Computing Partnership launches on international stage

Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre has signed a Letter of Intent with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to strengthen scientific cooperation in quantum computing.

The partnership, formalised with AIST’s Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI technology (G-QuAT), represents another step toward making quantum computing practical for real-world applications by combining it with the massive computational power of supercomputers.

That's a wrap on SCA/HPCAsia 2026

We've finished our time at SCA/HPCAsia 2026 in Osaka, Japan last week – representing Australia's HPC alongside NCI.

Our Quantum Supercomputing Researcher Lead Pascal Elahi, Manager Partner Relations Aditi Subramanya and Senior Storage Systems Administrator Team Lead Chris Schlipalius ran a series of workshops and talks.

We had plenty of talks on stage, and conversations at our booth about the help that supercomputers offer our researchers' work. This was a great opportunity to share examples of researchers advancing our understanding of physics, life sciences, climate science, data science, and more.

Virtually escape to Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory and Pawsey

Take a (virtual) detour to the stars at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory – including CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope and the SKAO’s SKA-Low telescope.

Explore the latest views of Wajarri Yamaji Country, as well as Pawsey's building on Whadjuk Noongar Country, currently where all the data from the telescopes at the observatory site ends up.

Summer Internship Showcase

Curious what the Pawsey summer interns have done in the last 12 weeks? Hear from them yourselves as they talk through their poster presentations.

This year's projects range from quantum image processing to prediction of transdiagnostic markers of mental health.

The interns will discuss everything from calcite micro pillars to dark matter halos – and you can join in via the online conference app Gather Town.

If you're interested in learning more about their findings and their time at Pawsey, please join us at the Internship Showcase.

Date: Friday, 13 February 2026
Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm AWST
Location: Online via Gather Town

Cost: Free

Register now to join us for the presentations!

Other interesting events to look out for

Australian BioCommons Webinar: The Technician Commitment -  Championing technical skills, roles and careers

12 February 2026 – 10-11am AEDT (online)

More information

Australian BioCommons Workshop: Spatial omics Sampler

25 February 2026 – 2-4 pm AEDT (online)

More information

Research Bazaar Perth 2026

23-25 June 2026 – Perth, Australia

More information

Turning waste into clean energy – powered by Australian supercomputing

Researchers from RMIT University in Australia have created a new material that can super-selectively capture CO₂ from biogas, transforming waste into a higher-value, cleaner fuel. We featured this in a video on our Instagram account.

Here’s the cool part: This breakthrough didn’t come from the lab alone.

To understand why the material works, researchers had to run quantum-level simulations of gas molecules interacting with the COF’s atomic structure – calculations far too complex for laptops or even commercial providers.

That’s where Pawsey’s Setonix and NCI’s Gadi supercomputers came in.

Built for massive parallel jobs, our energy efficient supercomputing Setonix and Gadi lets researchers map electron behaviour, optimise molecular structures, and model gas-capture performance at a scale.