Hartley Center Director Kate Royce sat down with Innovation Platform Editor Maddie Hall to discuss the Center’s innovative work, collaborative projects, and the wider impact of the Center’s role in accelerating digital transformation.
The Hartley Center plays a vital role in the advancement of high performance computing and digital technology in the UK. Committed to addressing complex challenges through advanced computational techniques, the center is shaping a technology-driven future. Leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and data science to enhance processes, improve patient care within the NHS, and accelerate research and development cycles.
Innovation Platform Editor Maddie Hall spoke with Kate Royce, Director of the Hartley Center, to delve into the Center’s innovative work and collaborative projects, and explore the broader implications of the Center’s role in driving digital transformation.
Can you give us an overview of the Hartley Center and its role in advancing high performance computing?
The Hartley Center was established in 2012 with the aim of enhancing the UK’s productivity, innovation and economic growth through computing and other digital technologies. We help UK businesses and public sector organizations explore and deploy high performance computing, as well as data science, cloud, quantum computing and AI technologies. The computing environment is rapidly evolving, so our portfolio of technology and expertise is constantly evolving. We must stay at the cutting edge of experimental digital technologies to advise and assist other organizations in their own implementation and integration.
The Hartley Center is part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and is built on a rich established scientific heritage and network of international expertise.
The Hartley Center transforms high-performance computing into real-world applications. One notable example is our work with Alder Hey to address challenges within the NHS. Can you tell us more about this project, the specific challenges it aims to solve, and the progress made so far?
Our latest project with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital is investigating how advanced digital technology can transform NHS staff’s schedules. The goal of this project is to develop an AI solution that facilitates complex rota planning and allows clinicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time with patients. This supports overall staff health, enhances workforce planning, and improves operational efficiency without compromising patient care.
We have had a long-term partnership with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust for over seven years, during which time we have worked on a variety of digital innovation projects, from reducing anxiety in young patients through a friendly chatbot app to keeping staff informed of the latest developments during the coronavirus pandemic.
What progress is the Hartley Center, in partnership with Swansea University, making in the field of solar material discovery using AI? Can you describe the Helios framework and explain its potential benefits?
We have been working with Swansea University through the Hartley National Center for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) program to develop an AI pipeline that can accelerate the discovery of next-generation solar cells. This new approach is interesting because it has the potential to shorten R&D cycles, reduce waste, and support sustainable innovation in photovoltaic materials. Traditionally, the discovery of improved materials for high-performance organic solar cells has relied on time-consuming and expensive experimental trial-and-error approaches. Our team developed the Helios framework, which combines molecular structure data with measurements of solar cell devices. Use deep learning to predict power conversion efficiency and narrow down the list of promising materials for experimental validation. Enabling rapid virtual screening of candidate materials can significantly reduce the number of experiments required to identify high-performance combinations.
Please outline other notable projects and initiatives that the Hartley Center is currently working on in the area of high performance computing.
One of our key partnerships at the moment is our Fusion Computing Lab with the UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA). The lab aims to build digital twins of fusion energy devices that will help make commercial fusion a reality. Combining our expertise in supercomputing, AI and data science with UKAEA’s expertise in fusion energy will accelerate digital-first design solutions that reduce the need for costly and time-consuming real-world prototyping. We partner with pioneering small businesses, universities, and engineering experts to enable and commercialize convergence.
We also work with the Japan Meteorological Agency to develop weather forecasting and climate prediction models, which we have been doing for over 10 years. Travel disruption due to the severe winter weather experienced in the UK can cost the economy hundreds of millions of pounds a day, so making these models as accurate and efficient as possible has a huge impact on both the economy and people’s daily lives.
The Hartley Center is committed to pushing the boundaries of quantum technology. What specific advances in quantum technology is the Hartley Center focused on, and how do you think these developments will impact various industries in the near future?
Our work in quantum computing is focused on helping industries become “quantum-ready” by integrating quantum computing with existing HPC systems through hybrid workflows, software tools, and large-scale simulations. In the future, as quantum technologies mature, fields such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, and advanced materials may be able to effectively tackle complex problems.
For example, we recently partnered with E.ON and IBM to investigate the feasibility of applying quantum computing to optimize the combination of energy sources and demand for smarter energy distribution, particularly balancing regional energy supply and demand. In the long term, this approach could enable a transition from rigid, centralized systems to intelligent, adaptive networks that maximize energy efficiency and build national resilience.
An example of our work in the quantum field is a simulation we conducted in collaboration with IBM and the National Physical Laboratory. How does a hybrid approach combining classical supercomputing and quantum resources improve the simulation of complex materials compared to traditional computing methods?
We expect that quantum computers will excel at simulating how materials respond to sudden environmental changes, such as changes in magnetic fields or rapid cooling, by directly representing how particles behave according to quantum physics. However, preparing the initial quantum state consumes a large amount of a quantum computer’s limited resources, often leaving little capacity for actual simulations. This creates a bottleneck that limits simulation capabilities. This is the equivalent of using up most of your fuel just to get to the starting line of a race.
In many materials science simulations, the initial entangled state, or “starting line,” requires a deep quantum circuit that only the simplest and shortest simulations can follow. This has significantly limited the complexity of quantum materials that researchers can study with pre-fault-tolerant quantum hardware.
In collaboration with IBM and the National Physical Laboratory, our team has discovered that a hybrid quantum-classical approach provides the best of both worlds by using classical supercomputing to significantly reduce the quantum resources required to prepare states.
This approach works because many of these initial quantum states can be efficiently represented on classical computers using tensor networks. Tensor networks are a way to approximate quantum systems that require large amounts of data by connecting many small blocks of information instead of storing one giant object. By using classical calculations to discover “shortcut” quantum circuits, we preserve the power of quantum hardware in critical areas, such as simulating the most complex dynamics.
Can you elaborate on the importance of the Mary Coombs supercomputer and what capabilities it will bring to the Hartley Center?
Our Mary Coombs supercomputers will continue to provide UK businesses and the public sector with the computing power they need to turn ambitious ideas into real-world solutions, from drug discovery to climate research. Mary Coombs is GPU-based and designed to process AI workloads, advanced visualizations, and large, complex datasets faster and more efficiently than ever before.
It is important to regularly update your digital infrastructure to keep pace with the international rate of progress in digital technology. To achieve this goal, Mary Coombs delivers 10x the performance of previous generation Scafell Pike while increasing energy efficiency.
A 24.41 petaflops system supercomputer can perform 24.41 quintillion floating point calculations per second. For comparison, it would take about 773 million years to achieve the same number if we performed one calculation per second.
The system was named in honor of Mary Coombs, Britain’s first female commercial programmer. This represents the Hartley Center’s mission to make supercomputing (and related digital technologies) accessible and up-to-date in UK industry.
The supercomputer, located at STFC’s Daresbury Research Institute, is also seen as an important national asset for the Liverpool City Region, reinforcing the North West’s position as a hub for advanced technology, digital skills and high-value jobs.
What are the challenges and limitations of current high-performance computing technology? How is the Hartley Center addressing these?
For many businesses and organizations, simply accessing HPC resources can be difficult due to financial constraints and knowledge barriers. That is exactly the issue that we aim to address as a center. Our core mission is to make it easier for UK organizations to try and adopt HPC technology, so they can increase productivity, improve competitiveness and reap economic benefits.
Hardware such as GPUs and supporting infrastructure are expensive to acquire, run, and maintain, so delivering HPC through a platform-as-a-service, combined with access to compute and data experts who can demystify the technology, helps businesses remove cost and knowledge barriers.
The technical complexity of high-performance computing systems can also make addressing information security issues very difficult. The Hartley Center addresses this issue by operating a management system that is independently certified to the ISO 9001+27001 standard.
What future trends do you foresee in high-performance computing?
There is a huge appetite both internationally and in the UK to continue developing quantum computing and reap its economic benefits. One need only look at the UK government’s recent announcement that it will spend £2 billion to establish the UK as a world leader in quantum innovation. The UK’s aim is to become the first country in the world to commit to manufacturing and deploying quantum computers at scale by the early 2030s, ushering in a new era of computing that could add £200bn to the economy by 2045.
We are also seeing changes across society in how people and organizations use AI, as it becomes more accessible and widespread. This means we will likely continue to see economic shifts as industries and individual organizations decide how to more comprehensively deploy, integrate, and/or limit AI. This is paralleled by increasing pressure to develop ethical and socially responsible policies, regulations and guidance around AI to prevent potential unintended consequences.
Guidance and regulation in areas such as AI can be difficult to “keep up with” the latest technological advances, but the team at the HeartTree Center is very keen to participate in these discussions with stakeholders, to have input into government policy where appropriate, and to take the utmost care in ethical and social responsibility when working on HeartTree Center-funded programs and industry projects.
This article will be published in an upcoming HPC Special Focus Publication.
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