Every day, our bodies endure myriad mechanical forces that influence proteins, especially collagen, at the molecular level. COLMEC aims to use collagen as a model to uncover the nuances of protein mechanochemistry. A central aspect of this research is deciphering how collagen's evolutionary adaptations influence its response to forces, especially in contexts of aging and disease. This pursuit is split into three distinct objectives: (1) investigating the coevolution of collagen's amino acid residues to decode its response to tensile forces; (2) delving into the role of metal ions in collagen crosslinking, drawing parallels with natural phenomena such as the resilience of mussel byssus; and (3) probing the mechanisms of force propagation within collagen's varied structures. Merging bioinformatics, computational biophysics, and materials science, COLMEC's interdisciplinary approach illuminates how evolution shapes protein defenses against mechanical strains. This knowledge is pivotal in establishing design rules for crafting synthetic collagen-like materials with tailored mechanical stability and response, bridging evolutionary insights with innovative material design.

Five leading European supercomputing centres are committed to develop, within their respective national programs and service portfolios, a set of services that will be federated across a consortium. The work will be undertaken by the following supercomputing centres, which form the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP): ▪ Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) in Spain, ▪ The Italian supercomputing centre CINECA, ▪ The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS, ▪ The Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, and ▪ Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), France (joining in April 2018). The new consortium will be called Fenix and it aims at providing scalable compute and data services in a federated manner. The neuroscience community is of particular interest in this context and the HBP represents a prioritised driver for the Fenix infrastructure design and implementation. The Interactive Computing E-Infrastructure for the HBP (ICEI) project will realise key elements of this Fenix infrastructure that are targeted to meet the needs of the neuroscience community. The participating sites plan for cloud-like services that are compatible with the work cultures of scientific computing and data science. Specifically, this entails developing interactive supercomputing capabilities on the available extreme computing and data systems. Key features of the ICEI infrastructure are: ▪ Scalable compute resources; ▪ A federated data infrastructure; and ▪ Interactive Compute Services providing access to the federated data infrastructure as well as elastic access to the scalable compute resources. The ICEI e-infrastructure will be realised through a coordinated procurement of equipment and R&D services. Furthermore, significant additional parts of the infrastructure and R&D services will be realised within the ICEI project through in-kind contributions from the participating supercomputing centres.