The information provided here is intended primarily for academic researchers, if your interests are more commercial or industry based, you may find the Information for Industry pages more suited to your needs.

New users

• Acceptable usage policy
• Creating an account
• Help
• Grants

Services

VPAC provides a number of services for Students, Academic and Researchers. These include:

• Operation of a number of Supercomputers for technical or High Performance Computing (HPC).
• People who are employed or enrolled at any of the Victorian member Universities are entitled to have an account subject to approval by their University Operations Committee member.
• The VPAC eResearch Grants Scheme provides an annual round of small to medium cash grants to assist researchers in achieving their goals.
• A number of training courses are run annually, please see our training pages. VPAC conducts a range of seminars, briefings and other events for the benefit of our members.

VPAC provides support for Advanced Computing to Members in a variety of ways, including:

• Access at no charge to VPAC"s hardware, software, and visualisation capabilities;
• Assisting users to select, develop, and install custom software for applications such as websites, visualisation, or customised databases;
• Training in programming and software design;
• Assistance in writing grant proposals that need computing resources and in-kind support;
• Funding for Members' R&D projects (e-Research Grants).

Any advice, general training, or general assistance that VPAC provides comes at no cost to VPAC Members. VPAC has full-time, in-house scientists, engineers, and programmers, who are experts in a wide range of sciences including biomedical, biochemistry and geospatial applications and virtual engineering; and in-house experts in computer software development and systems administration.

HPC Facility

VPAC operates a state of the art, internationally recognised HPC Facility aimed at providing VPAC's Members, industry and other organisations with cutting edge advanced computing tools and capabilities. The facility, consisting of two large cluster computing facilities with terabytes of storage, is managed by an expert team of software engineers and system administrators who provide high-level support to all HPC facility users to ensure VPAC follows the industry's best practices and our Members, Industry and other organisations receive the maximum benefit from VPAC's facilities. Members are able to receive free accounts on the VPAC HPC system through their project officer, please see the creating new accounts page for more information.

Advanced Visualisation

VPAC has access to an Advanced Visualisation facility incorporating a four metre radius, 150 degree field of view Trimension screen that can be used for interactive visualisation in the fields on biotechnology and drug discovery, engineering, architecture, geoscience and more.

Software

VPAC has partnerships with key vendors of engineering and scientific software to support their packages and products on VPAC's super computing platform. VPAC offers a wide range of software applications, commercial and open-source, for a wide variety of research fields including Life Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, Geoscience, Engineering and more. Members are able to access VPAC's extensive range of software packages free of charge for academic usage.

The Access Grid

VPAC houses an Access Grid node that provides a state of the art videoconferencing facility aimed at fostering immersive training and remote collaboration among research groups and industry experts across Australia and worldwide. VPAC Members are able to use this exciting advanced videoconferencing facility free of charge.

VPAC's Capability Statement

Please see the VPAC Capability Statement (PDF) for an overview of these and other capabilities.