Slovenian national information sciences institute supporting HPC competence, research infrastructure, and advanced computing education across Europe.
IZUM (Institut informacijskih znanosti) is Slovenia's national institute for information sciences, based in Maribor, operating key research and library infrastructure at national scale. Their H2020 participation places them within Europe's high performance computing ecosystem — first as a contributor to building national HPC competence centres, then as a partner in developing formal European master's-level training for HPC professionals. They sit at the intersection of research infrastructure management, ICT services, and academic knowledge transfer. In EU projects, IZUM functions as a supporting institutional node rather than a direct research beneficiary, contributing infrastructure or domain services as a third party.
EUROCC (2020-2022) placed IZUM within the EuroHPC National Competence Centre framework, linking their work to HPC capacity-building, skills development, and industry engagement across Europe.
EUMaster4HPC (2022-2026) focuses on building a European Master's degree in High Performance Computing, with IZUM contributing to training design in data analytics and digital transformation.
Both projects rely on IZUM's institutional role as Slovenia's information sciences institute, supporting the broader research and education ecosystem as a third-party contributor.
EUMaster4HPC explicitly includes 'digital transformation' and 'innovation' in its scope, reflecting IZUM's expanding focus beyond pure HPC infrastructure.
IZUM's earliest H2020 engagement (2020) was grounded in operational HPC competence — establishing national capacity for high performance computing with direct links to industry skills training. By 2022, the emphasis had shifted toward data analytics, formal education, and digital transformation, suggesting a deliberate move from infrastructure capacity-building toward curriculum design and knowledge transfer. The trajectory is clear: from HPC infrastructure operator to HPC educator and training provider.
IZUM is moving toward formal academic training and digital transformation education in HPC, making them a relevant partner for European universities or consortia building advanced computing curricula or research training programs.
IZUM participates exclusively as a third party in EU projects, providing supporting services or infrastructure rather than receiving direct EC funding or leading work packages. Both projects belong to very large pan-European consortia under the EuroHPC umbrella, which explains the disproportionately high partner and country counts relative to a two-project portfolio. Engaging IZUM means working with them as a national infrastructure node or service contributor, not as a co-investigator or work package leader.
Connected to 133 unique partners across 33 countries, though this breadth primarily reflects the scale of the EuroHPC programme's pan-European consortia rather than IZUM's own bilateral research relationships. Geographic coverage spans most EU member states.
IZUM is one of the few Slovenian institutions with a dedicated mandate in information sciences and national research infrastructure, giving them an institutional anchoring role that generic universities or SMEs cannot fill. Their position within the EuroHPC competence network — as Slovenia's national node — makes them a natural entry point for consortia that need Slovenian HPC or research infrastructure representation. For project builders seeking an established, nationally mandated information and computing institution in Slovenia, IZUM offers credibility and reach that smaller research groups do not.
