Daijiworld Media Network - Pune

Pune, Jun 19: In a major boost to India’s public health research infrastructure, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has inaugurated a cutting-edge High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune. Named NAKSHATRA, the new computing cluster is set to revolutionize genomic research and disease surveillance, enhancing the nation’s preparedness for future pandemics.

Commissioned under the Pradhan Mantri Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PMABHIM), the facility supports the new “High Performance Computing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Hub” project. The initiative aims to address the limitations India faced during the COVID-19 crisis when conventional computing systems struggled to meet the demands of rapid genomic analysis.

“From just 290 viral species and 2 virus families identified in 1971, we now know of 14,690 viral species and 314 families as of 2023,” said Dr. Naveen Kumar, Director of ICMR-NIV. He attributed this rise to increased globalization, deforestation, and climate change — factors that drive zoonotic spillovers and novel pathogen emergence.

NAKSHATRA will strengthen India’s surveillance capabilities for diseases like Nipah, Zika, West Nile, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, H5N1 bird flu, and more. The system features 12 compute nodes, 700 cores, and 1 petabyte of storage, supporting advanced research in transcriptomics, metagenomics, phylogenetics, and AI-assisted drug and vaccine development.

The cluster will also act as a central repository for genomic sequencing data and provide computational support to Viral Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs) across India. Initially, five ICMR institutes will benefit from this infrastructure, which marks a strategic step toward India’s vision of ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’ — a technologically empowered and health-secure nation.