EuroHPC User Days brings science, access, and AI Factories into focus

The EuroHPC User Days this year gathered some 300 onsite participants in the beautiful Black Diamond building of the Royal Danish Library’s Cultural Center and at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen, under the Danish EU presidency.

The event highlighted EuroHPC projects that have leveraged Europe’s world-class supercomputing resources. The occasion also allowed participants to present their work, exchange best practices, and gather feedback from fellow EuroHPC users, while also connecting with potential new adopters of high-performance computing and AI.

Designed as a forum for Europe’s supercomputing community, the event provided users with the opportunity to explore key topics, deepen their understanding of the opportunities offered by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, and learn about the wide range of support available to accelerate their projects.

The event opened with a high-level plenary session featuring Annemarie Falktoft, Deputy Director-General of the Danish Agency for Higher Education; Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking; Gitte Julin Kudsk, Director of the Danish e-Infrastructure Consortium (DeiC); Chris Richardson, Chair of the User Forum; and Luigi Del Debbio, Chair of the EuroHPC Access Resource Committee.

From there, the program continued with sessions covering access modes, best practices for using EuroHPC services, and available support services. In parallel sessions, domain-focused tracks explored the use of HPC in engineering, chemical sciences, and high-energy physics.

The day concluded with a panel discussion on AI Factory support to users, providing practical insights into how users can leverage EuroHPC AI Factories to accelerate AI innovation. Pekka Manninen, Director of the LUMI AI Factory, contributed to the discussion, sharing perspectives on how these resources can benefit the broader research community.

Image: Pekka Manninen (2nd from left), Director of the LUMI AI Factory, presenting the LUMI AI Factory at the EuroHPC User Days 2025.

LUMI AI Factory and LUMI supercomputer at the Meet & Greet

The first day also featured a Meet and Greet session, offering visitors the chance to connect with EuroHPC hosting entities and AI Factories, explore potential collaborations, and get their questions answered. The LUMI AI Factory, alongside the LUMI supercomputer, showcased its offering, engaged with users, and discussed opportunities for future collaboration.
We were also excited to unveil the freshly launched LUMI AI Factory website to the HPC and AI community at the User Days. The website highlights our core services and gives users straightforward access to the initial 13 services now available.
Read more about our services in the LUMI AI Factory website’s Service catalogue.

Image: Aleksi Kallio, Director of LUMI AI Factory Services (left) and Pekka Manninen, Director of the LUMI AI Factory at the Meet & Greet session at the EuroHPC User Days 2025.

Awards ceremony honors LUMI user

The event ended on a high note for the LUMI supercomputer as its user, Dr. Szabolcs Borsanyi of Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany, received the Best Paper Award for his work “The QCD crossover line in a finite volume.” His pioneering lattice QCD simulations on LUMI-G explore matter under extreme conditions.

Image: Josephine Woods (left) and Anders Dam Jensen (right) awarding Dr. Szabolcs Borsanyi for the Best Paper Award at the EuroHPC User Days 2025. Copyright: Zuzana Cervenkova, IT4Innovations.

Two other EuroHPC awardees were also recognized. Dr. Valeria Ospina-Bohorquez of Focused Energy GmbH, Germany, received the Best EuroHPC User Award for her exemplary and strategic use of EuroHPC resources, including strong collaboration on the Karolina and Vega supercomputers.

A second Best Paper Award went to Özgür Uğur from NewMind AI, Türkiye, for the paper “Tailoring AI for Turkish Law: Domain-Specific Fine-Tuning of Small Language Models for Legal Expertise.” The team developed specialized AI tools for the Turkish legal system, training a compact, open-source language model on curated texts spanning 10 areas of law, from tax and labour to data protection and environmental law.

Congratulations to all the winners! Looking forward to meeting our users at the next EuroHPC User Days!