Newsletter 2/2026 | E-Infra

e-INFRA CZ | 02/2026
30 Jun 2026, 9:07

Dear members of the research and innovation community,

This year, we celebrate two milestones that have helped shape digital infrastructure for research and innovation in the Czech Republic: 30 years of CESNET and 15 years of IT4Innovations. Together, these anniversaries reflect a long-standing commitment to supporting excellent science.

Over the past three decades, CESNET has evolved from building the Czech academic network into a provider of advanced services connecting people, data, and knowledge across disciplines and borders. During its fifteen years, IT4Innovations has grown into a leading national supercomputing centre, expanding into artificial intelligence, data analytics, and quantum computing.

Together with CERIT-SC, we form e-INFRA CZ, a national e-infrastructure providing integrated services for networking, computing, data storage, cybersecurity, digital identity, and collaboration. As science becomes increasingly data-intensive and AI-driven, our mission remains clear: to provide world-class infrastructure and expertise that support research, innovation, and international cooperation.

We thank all users, partners, and colleagues who have contributed to this journey and look forward to the discoveries ahead.

Jakub Papírník (Director of CESNET) & Vít Vondrák (Director of IT4Innovations)

Czechia becomes a key pillar of European data infrastructure: The EOSC CZ National Node

The EOSC CZ Node has joined the second wave of the EOSC Federation, a European network connecting research services, data and digital infrastructures. Built on services provided by e-INFRA CZ, the node will help connect Czech repositories, platforms and research communities with the wider European Open Science system.

You Spoke, We Listened: Changes We Made Based on User Feedback

Your feedback plays an important role in shaping e-INFRA CZ services. Based on suggestions from our user community, we continuously improve documentation, communication, software tools, and technical settings to better support researchers in their daily work. Find out how we gather feedback, what changes have already been introduced, and what improvements are currently being prepared.

100 billion tokens and counting

The national LLM service operated by CERIT-SC within e-INFRA CZ has processed more than 100 billion tokens since its launch. Used by over 1,700 members of the Czech research community, it provides access to advanced language models in an environment that keeps data under institutional control.

Czech AI Factory officially launched

The Czech AI Factory (CZAI) has been launched as the Czech node of the European AI Factories network. Built around the new AI-optimised KarolAIna supercomputer, it will provide computing capacity, data services and expert support for AI projects in research, industry, healthcare, energy and the public sector.

Supercomputers, AI and quantum computing: IT4Innovations celebrates 15 years

From the first Czech supercomputer to the launch of the country’s first quantum computer. IT4Innovations is marking 15 years of supporting research and innovation through advanced computing infrastructure and participation in European initiatives in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.

CESNET and Ribbon validate quantum-secured optical networking

A joint test by CESNET and Ribbon Communications confirmed that quantum key distribution can be integrated into an operational optical network without affecting performance. The result demonstrates the practical feasibility of quantum-secured communication in both research and commercial environments.

Building the MetaCentrum Ambassador Community

Thank you to everyone who applied to become a MetaCentrum Ambassador. We received 70 applications from experienced users interested in supporting the community. The Ambassador Programme is now under development, and we look forward to introducing it soon.

Where Is Your Research Data Stored?

Help us map where researchers store their research data. The aim of this anonymous survey is to gain a basic overview of where researchers store their data and at which stage of the research process. The survey contains only 3 questions and takes less than a minute to complete.

Share Your Experience

Faster protein structure search with AlphaFindv2

CERIT-SC has launched AlphaFindv2, a new generation of its protein structure search engine. The service enables researchers to rapidly search hundreds of millions of protein structures using machine learning and high-performance computing. The platform supports biological and biomedical research by helping identify structurally similar proteins and analyse large-scale protein datasets. AlphaFind is openly available to researchers worldwide and can be easily integrated into a wide range of research workflows.

38th Open Access Grant Competition open until 27 July

IT4Innovations has launched the 38th round of its Open Access Grant Competition, providing researchers with free access to advanced computational resources for non-commercial research projects. The competition is open to employees of Czech research, scientific, and educational institutions and is announced three times a year. Applications are now open until 27 July 2026. Researchers can apply for computing time on the Barbora NG, Karolina and LUMI supercomputers, as well as the VLQ quantum computer.

Discover open call

A major storage upgrade for MetaCentrum

MetaCentrum expands storage capacity MetaCentrum has completed a major upgrade of its storage array in České Budějovice, increasing total capacity from 150 TB to 1 PB. The modernization also brings higher performance and expands the default user quota from 100 GB to 3 TB.

České Budějovice

storage-praha5-elixir

Tue 30 Jun

Securing GitHub & GitLab Repositories in the Era of Supply Chain Attacks and AI Agents

This webinar explores the evolving threat landscape surrounding GitHub and GitLab repositories, with a focus on recent software supply chain attacks and new security risks introduced by AI-powered tools and autonomous agents.

Wed 30 Sep – Thu 1 Oct

CESNET Conference 2026 (CZ)

Join experts from research, academia and IT at this year’s CESNET conference to explore the latest developments in networking, cybersecurity, data storage and high-performance computing. The programme will also feature presentations of research projects and live demonstrations of technologies and services developed within CESNET.

Don't forget to include the required acknowledgment phrase in your publications:

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic through the e-INFRA CZ (ID:90254).

You can find the assignment of e-INFRA CZ to R&D results supported by this research infrastructure on the e-INFRA CZ website.

MORE ABOUT USERS´DUTIES

Link your e-INFRA CZ account to ORCID iD

Connecting your account helps better track how the infrastructure contributes to research results and outputs. It also enables more efficient automated reporting and supports a more accurate evaluation of the impact and use of e-INFRA CZ services.

Link your account

Explore e-INFRA CZ services in one place

The docs.e-infra.cz portal brings together documentation for all e-INFRA CZ services in one place. It helps users find guides for computing services, data storage, Galaxy workflows and AI-based tools, supporting use of the infrastructure across different research needs.