HPC Hearts & Minds

Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
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Documenting the monumental discoveries of researchers, and the role Pawsey plays in supporting their breakthroughs. Welcome to HPC Hearts & Minds, where we talk to the people behind some of today’s most fascinating discoveries. High Performance Computing, or HPC, allows researchers to tackle incredibly complex questions. This series is all about finding out the real-world impact that comes from using this large-scale computing. We want to showcase the hearts and minds behind the technology.

Episodes

  1. Sep 21

    Ep 3: Ticks, Bites and Parasites

    With the memory of a global pandemic still fresh, the world is more aware than ever of how diseases jump from wildlife to humans. In this episode, we sat down with Dr. Siobhon Egan, a research fellow at Murdoch University. Siobhon is a molecular biologist and parasitologist who studies the microscopic pathogens that move between species. Her studies at university started in animal health with plans to go down the veterinary pathway, but a deep curiosity for lab work under the microscope changed all that. Siobhon has conducted extensive fieldwork in the southwest bush of Australia, navigating the low-yield "luck game" of trapping bats, birds, and terrestrial mammals. She later moved from the animal microbiome world to the Australian National Phenome Centre, joining a team that brought expertise from London to study the human gut microbiome. She has personally processed at least 60 of Australia’s 74 native tick species, investigated how a single paralysis tick bite on the East Coast can trigger a lifelong mammalian meat allergy, and is part of a study tracking tick-bite victims for a full year. Comparing and identifying these pathogens is vital, but historically, researchers could only match DNA sequences locally using small, curated databases. As genomic sequencing costs have plummeted, the volume of samples has ballooned. Today, a single patient’s dataset can easily reach terabytes of data containing millions of complex genetic fragments. She recently had a paper published of a study tracking tick-bite victims for a full year looking at Debilitating Symptom Complexes Attributed to Ticks (DSCATT). As technology has improved, high-performance computing (HPC) has stepped in. Using Pawsey’s supercomputer Setonix, Siobhon’s team can compare massive, complex patient files against every known and unknown sequence in public records, analysing datasets in just a couple of days – a task that would take weeks or even months to attempt on a local computer. 00:00 Intro: Hearts, Minds, and Microbes01:38 "Came for the Animals, Stayed for the Parasites"04:48 Out in the Bush: Playing the 30% Luck Game06:17 Explaining My PhD (Thanks, COVID!)08:29 Speaking 'Chemistry': A Whole New Language09:45 The Lone Biologist in a Room14:02 The Tick That Forces You to Go Vegetarian18:08 Down Under Disease: Fighting the 60-Year Taxonomy Gap22:46 Meet DSCATT: Tracking Tick-Bite Sufferers for a Year26:38 "A Million Service Units, Please!"28:35 Code-Slinging Biologists: Teaching the Next Gen32:36 Real-Time Sequencers: Keep the Bug, Trash the Host37:34 High-Tech Swabs for Sick Bush Dogs38:46 Drive It, Don't Build It: Demystifying HPC40:48 Outro See Siobhon's PhD video from 2017: 2017 Pawsey Intern: Siobhon Egan Watch the video of this episode.   Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Ep 3: Ticks, Bites and Parasites

  2. Apr 30

    Ep 2: Moon Craters and Mars Meteorites

    With Artemis II back on Earth, the world is abuzz about the Moon. In this episode we sat down with Professor Gretchen Benedix, Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research at Curtin University.  Gretchen is an astro-geologist who studies craters. Her studies at university started in psychology, but one elective unit changed all that. Gretchen has moved from the US, to the UK, eventually finding her way to Australia, where she has worked on projects like the Desert Fireball Network, which watches the sky and lets the team know when a new asteroid has landed on Earth. She’s gone on expeditions to Antarctica to pick up meteorites, can analyse rocks that made the journey from Mars all the way to Earth, and even has an asteroid named after her. Counting craters helps astro-geologists to understand the surface ages of planets. Older maps of craters on planets were painstakingly counted by hand. For Mars, it took over six years to identify 385,000 craters that were 1 kilometre wide. As technology has improved, so has that ability to count. Using Pawsey’s supercomputer, Gretchen’s team analysed vast datasets of high-resolution images from Mars missions. Through machine learning, they automated crater detection, identifying more than 90 million impact craters in just 24 hours – a task that would have taken years manually. This work informed the world’s largest Mars crater database, enabling researchers to determine the age of surface features with unprecedented accuracy. It also supported major discoveries, including tracing the origin of the 'Black Beauty' meteorite back to a specific crater on Mars. 00:00 Welcome & Big Questions About Mars01:28 From Stargazing to Science: Gretchen’s Early Journey05:38 From Psychology to Physics — Learning Through Failure07:45 Meteorites, Asteroids, and Earth’s Place in Space14:55 Falling in Love with Rocks: Meteorites, Geology, and Fieldwork24:58 Pawsey, Data, and the Power of Supercomputing33:16 Craters as Clocks: Dating Mars and the Moon40:33 Mapping 94 Million Craters with Machine Learning58:29 The Bigger Picture: Life, Planets, and What Comes Next Watch a talk Gretchen Benedix gave at Pawsey in 2020: Decoding the Surface Age of Mars Watch the video of this episode.   Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Ep 2: Moon Craters and Mars Meteorites

  3. Mar 3

    Ep 1: Secrets and Tsunamis of the Indian Ocean with Charitha Pattiaratchi

    Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi is an Oceanographer at the University of Western Australia.  For over 25 years, Chari has been instrumental in showcasing the power behind the waters that surround us, including discoveries in tsunami impacts and dense shelf water transport.  Essentially oceanography studies the ocean, but there’s so much more to it, which Chari explains later. Chari received the People's Choice Award at the Premier’s Scientist of the Year for 2025 for his contributions to Australian oceanography. His work also helped discover locations of debris from the missing MH370 flight back in 2014, which we talk about as well. Using oceanic drift modelling with Pawsey’s supercomputer, Chari was able to simulate two years’ worth of moving water. This gave plane debris locations along Madagascar, Mozambique and Tanzania. Chari sees what he does as if it’s a jigsaw puzzle, taking each piece – like supercomputing, fieldwork and satellite imagery – and putting it together to see the whole picture. Chari has documented a lot of what makes our waters different from the rest of the world. He was one of the first users of iVEC, which was what Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre was called until 2014. His love for the ocean has taken him from his home in Sri Lanka to the United Kingdom, and now in Australia, studying the Indian Ocean and why it vastly differs from other oceans. Chapters: 01:34 - Discovering Oceanography02:23 - Early Life in Sri Lanka09:35 - From Sri Lanka to the UK14:59 - Starting a Career in Computing and HPC17:32 - Arriving in Australia and the Birth of MATLAB20:58 - Supercomputers Transforming Ocean Science27:55 - Global Data Collection and Observing Systems36:04 - Major Scientific Breakthroughs41:55 - The MH370 Search46:52 - Future of Ocean Science & Climate ModellingWatch our interview with Charitha Pattiaratchi from 2019: Finding MH370 using oceanographic modelling Watch the video of this episode.   Click here to view the episode transcript.

    Ep 1: Secrets and Tsunamis of the Indian Ocean with Charitha Pattiaratchi

  4. Feb 24

    HPC Hearts & Minds Trailer

    Welcome to HPC Hearts & Minds, where we talk to some of the people using High Performance Computing (or HPC) to solve some of today’s most fascinating discoveries. This series is all about finding out the real-world impact that comes from using this large-scale computing. We talk to researchers and scientists across Australia on how they have used HPC to discover their breakthroughs. With hundreds of projects going on at any one time, we've yet to tap into all of these incredible stories. Those hearts and minds we keep mentioning here at Pawsey. We've been lucky enough to talk to some incredibly passionate, sharp, generous people about the work they have done, and continue to do. We hope you get as much joy listening to these as we did when we got to talk to each one. There's a lot of stories to dig out, and we can't wait to share them with you. Visit our website to learn more about Pawsey.

    HPC Hearts & Minds Trailer
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    3 Episodes

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About

Documenting the monumental discoveries of researchers, and the role Pawsey plays in supporting their breakthroughs. Welcome to HPC Hearts & Minds, where we talk to the people behind some of today’s most fascinating discoveries. High Performance Computing, or HPC, allows researchers to tackle incredibly complex questions. This series is all about finding out the real-world impact that comes from using this large-scale computing. We want to showcase the hearts and minds behind the technology.

Information

  • Creator
    Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre
  • Show Website
    HPC Hearts & Minds