CENTRE INFORMATIQUE NATIONAL DE L'ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERIEUR

Their core work

CINES is France's national high-performance computing and long-term data archiving centre for higher education and research. They operate supercomputers, provide large-scale storage and digital preservation services, and support researchers across disciplines with computing infrastructure. Within EU projects, they contribute HPC resources, data management expertise, and cloud infrastructure services — acting as the operational backbone that keeps research data accessible, preserved, and computable at scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the early phase (2015-2018), CINES focused on foundational computing and data infrastructure — providing HPC capacity through PRACE and building pan-European data services via EUDAT2020. From 2019 onward, their work shifted decisively toward the EOSC ecosystem, FAIR data compliance, and open science — with projects like EOSC-hub, EOSC-Pillar, and FAIRsFAIR reflecting Europe's push to make research data findable, accessible, and reusable. Their entry into health data analytics via ORCHESTRA (2020) signals a move from pure infrastructure provision toward domain-specific data applications.

CINES is evolving from a pure HPC/storage provider into a FAIR-compliant open science infrastructure operator, increasingly applying its capabilities to domain-specific challenges like pandemic preparedness.

How they like to work

CINES never coordinates projects — they consistently serve as a participant or third-party contributor, providing infrastructure and technical services to large consortia. With 206 unique partners across 41 countries from just 9 projects, they operate as a broad-network infrastructure provider rather than a project driver. This means they are low-maintenance partners who deliver reliable technical capacity without competing for scientific leadership.

Remarkably broad network for their project count: 206 unique partners across 41 countries, a result of participating in flagship pan-European infrastructure projects (PRACE, EUDAT, EOSC) that each involve 30-50+ partners.

What sets them apart

CINES occupies a specific niche as France's designated national computing centre for higher education, giving them institutional permanence and guaranteed infrastructure that few project partners can match. Unlike commercial cloud providers, they understand research data lifecycle from computation through long-term preservation — making them uniquely qualified for projects requiring both processing power and decades-long data stewardship. Their triple presence in PRACE, EUDAT, and EOSC means they already operate at the intersection of Europe's three main research infrastructure pillars.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EUDAT2020
  Largest single funding (EUR 825,923) — CINES was a key node in building Europe's collaborative pan-European data infrastructure.
• ORCHESTRA
  Most distinctive project: applied CINES infrastructure capabilities to real-time pandemic response, connecting European cohorts for SARS-CoV-2 research with federated learning.
• EOSC-Pillar
  Second-largest funding (EUR 568,812) — positioned CINES as France's representative in harmonising national data infrastructures into the European Open Science Cloud.