Deucalion took part in European Researchers’ Night (ERN) 2026 on 25 September at Forum Braga, with hands-on activities about high-performance computing (HPC) for all ages.
Every year, science is celebrated alongside communities in 40 countries and hundreds of European cities. To raise awareness among younger generations of the importance of science and researchers’ work, the Deucalion team, infrastructure managed by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) / Agency for Research and Innovation (AI²) with operational support from the National Center for Advanced Computing (CNCA), joined the programme with a series of activities prepared for different age groups.
Throughout the evening, visitors discovered what the Deucalion supercomputer is, what it can do and how it helps address current and future challenges.
The activities “Multi-Cor(e)” and “Build a parallel processing machine”, aimed at pre-school and primary school children, demonstrated how parallel processing works in computer processors. In the board game “Build a Supercomputer”, participants assembled Deucalion’s components. For older visitors, “Task Maestro” explained Slurm, the system that organises and distributes tasks across the supercomputer.
Alongside the interactive games, visitors could also explore the results of two projects run on the supercomputer. The first demonstration featured a video of a 3D simulation of wind behaviour around Forum Braga, created with LiDAR data from Portugal’s Directorate-General for Territory. The second presentation featured an interactive map of mainland Portugal showing the main crops, which visitors could explore themselves.
The participation, in partnership with CNCA and INESC TEC, reinforced Deucalion’s role as a national research infrastructure and proved how supercomputing supports science in Portugal.
