On 20 May, the seminar “The Italian National Research Centre on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing meets the Dutch scientific and entrepreneurial communities” was held at the Italian Cultural Institute of Amsterdam.
The event, organised by the Embassy of Italy in The Hague as part of the initiatives celebrating the 8th Italian Research Day in the World – established by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in 2018 – brought together professors, researchers and experts from Dutch and Italian universities, research centres and companies. The seminar featured the Italian National Centre for Supercomputing (ICSC Foundation), founded in 2022 under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), alongside the Dutch quantum technology network Quantum Delta NL.
The Italian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Augusto Massari, highlighted the government’s efforts to promote Italy’s most advanced capabilities in the fields of research, technology and innovation: “Scientific diplomacy is an increasingly important aspect of our foreign policy,” the Ambassador stated. “We are called upon to support the passion for research of our scientists: today’s meeting points the way to further strengthen technological cooperation between Italy and the Netherlands, and to promote cross-border innovation in strategic digital sectors”.
The seminar included contributions from Professor Antonio Zoccoli, President of ICSC and of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN). In his address, he emphasised that: “The main objective of ICSC is to establish a National Data Lake Cloud Computing Infrastructure. Italy will be the first country in the world to have such a digital infrastructure, which will enable research and business to come together”.
Among the speakers and attendees were numerous Italian researchers and academics based in the Netherlands – a community of several hundred individuals, many of whom hold senior positions.
The day featured a number of engaging presentations and discussions involving start-ups, innovative companies and researchers from leading Italian and Dutch institutions, all committed to promoting excellence in high-performance simulation and data-intensive research.
