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Sébastien Lemieux takes over as Scientific Director of Calcul Québec
Published on January 22, 2025
Sébastien Lemieux, Director of IRIC’s Functional and Structural Bioinformatics Research Unit, was appointed Scientific Director of Calcul Québec last November.
A not-for-profit organization, Calcul Québec provides digital infrastructures and training to member universities and research centers, ensuring that the Quebec research community remains competitive. In his role as Scientific Director, Sébastien Lemieux will be responsible for guiding the organization’s scientific initiatives, promoting the integration of high-performance computing and data management resources to support university research, while supporting training and innovation within the Quebec scientific community.
“My priority will be to ensure a strong link between Calcul Québec and university scientific communities,” explains Sébastien Lemieux. “Researchers’ needs are constantly evolving, and we will ensure that they are adequately met, both in terms of services and implementation of computing infrastructures.”
Strengthening artificial intelligence and modeling capabilities for biomedical research
The work carried out at IRIC by Sébastien Lemieux, particularly at the interface of artificial intelligence, transcriptomics and drug discovery, requires an ever-increasing amount of computing resources. This is particularly true for the training and optimization of complex neural networks, operations whose results quality depends on the available computing power.
“As the needs of research laboratories fluctuate over time, Calcul Québec’s offer of shared resources is a must to ensure optimal use of equipment,” says the researcher. “A bit like a car-sharing service, computing power is distributed among user groups according to their respective needs.”
Sébastien Lemieux is also head of IRIC’s Bioinformatics and Artificial Intelligence Axis, which will welcome two new bioinformatics laboratories in 2025. An expansion that will consolidate the impact of AI and other computational methods for data analysis and development of therapeutic solutions at the Institute. “The four teams that will make up the axis will have complementary expertise that will amplify the synergies we have put in place with IRIC’s other research axes, to the benefit of cancer research.”