PULSE Collaborations (formerly Uptake Projects)
Pawsey PULSE Collaborations maximise the impact of research using Pawsey’s services, also known as Uptake Projects in previous calls. PULSE projects are intended to facilitate:
- Promoting collaborations between Pawsey researchers and staff.
- Uplifting research the scale and scope of scientific research using Pawsey infrastructure.
- Learning best practices and novel approaches for computational research.
- Skill development to improving the efficiency and performance of scientific workloads.
- Engagement with researchers from a wide range of scientific domains.
This expression of interest call for Pawsey PULSE Collaborations is open to Australian-based research communities. The project leader must be employed by an Australian university, government, or research institution. Successful projects receive dedicated Pawsey staff time (up to 0.20 FTE over six months) in collaboration to improve of the capability of research using Pawsey infrastructure. Depending on the nature of the project, this time may be distributed across expertise from multiple Pawsey staff if necessary. The distribution and total effort provided will be determined by Pawsey, based on the proposed project. Although this is not an allocation call, new projects may be granted a Preparatory Access allocation for benchmarking and development if needed.
The scope of an individual collaboration may include, but is not limited to:
- Feasibility studies involving profiling and benchmarking scientific software to identify scope for future improvement.
- Improving performance by migrating interpreted scripts (such as MATLAB, R, Python) to compiled languages (such as C/C++ or Fortran).
- Optimisation of scientific software using code refactoring to improve vectorisation, use of high-performance numerical libraries and/or use of GPUs.
- Parallelisation and acceleration of scientific software using MPI, OpenMP, ROCm, and/or HIP.
- Improving code performance by identifying and correcting performance bottlenecks related to data transfer and/or communication.
- Optimising workflows for more efficient queue utilisation, improved job scripts, or use of containers for complex software stacks (such as using Nextflow or Snakemake).
- Investigating the configuration or adoption of a proof-of-concept for new features, APIs, services, or protocols.
- Developing workflows to effectively visualise large-scale/complex datasets, including in-situ visualisation using remote visualisation.
- Developing scripting to generate visualisations of high-quality images and animation using remote rendering.
- Visualisation of dataset using the remote VR service.
- Translation of classical algorithms to quantum computing algorithms and development of hybrid workflows for running on both quantum computing hardware (or simulators) and classical HPC hardware.
Based on previous calls, competitive applications have a clear purpose, outline the contribution of the research team, and utilise Setonix’s power-efficient GPU architecture. Researchers looking to improve CPU-based workflows are also encouraged to apply. The PULSE collaboration is expected to result in a project report. Pawsey staff should also be included as co-authors on joint publication(s) when their work contributed to the results.
Please apply via the Pawsey Application Portal, using the PULSE Collaboration form. Note that the application portal uses your AAF institutional credentials for authentication rather than your Pawsey account. For assistance with your application or for any other enquiries, please contact the Pawsey help desk via the User Support Portal or via email at help@pawsey.org.au
Applications close 17th of April 2026, End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE)
Pawsey Application Portal