In the latest call for proposals by the '"Forschungszentrum Jülich", the research project of <link internal-link internal link in current>Dr. Dimitrios Pantazis, Leader of the group „Water Splitting“, was awarded with more than one million hours of computing time to simulate the natural photosynthetic process at an unprecedented scale.

The “Forschungszentrum Jülich” provides scientist and engineers with Supercomputers of the highest performance class to solve highly complex problems by simulations. The use of these resources of data processors at the <link http: www.fz-juelich.de ias jsc de home _blank external-link-new-window external link in new>Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) is a privilege and reserved for relevant research projects.

The research proposal of Dr. Pantazis involves molecular dynamics modelling of the enzyme "photosystem II", the “engine of life”, that catalyses the oxidation of water and drives the process of photosynthesis in plants and other photosynthetic organisms.

Using the resources of the "Forschungszentrum Jülich", which hosts some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, will enable the group of Dr. Pantazis to study the complete architecture of the enzyme and understand how all the different biological components are organized to work together. This will be crucial for understanding Nature’s highly optimized catalyst that could be mimicked in the design of artificial photosynthetic systems.