Two international research projects involving RIKEN researchers have been selected as finalists for the 2026 ACM Gordon Bell Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in high-performance computing. Established in 1987 by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the prize recognizes outstanding achievements in applying large-scale parallel computing to science and engineering. The two finalist projects demonstrate how cutting-edge supercomputing, quantum computing and artificial intelligence can enable scientific simulations at unprecedented scales.

The first project, a collaboration between Cleveland Clinic, the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) and IBM, used a quantum-centric supercomputing approach that combines the strengths of quantum and classical computing to simulate a biologically important molecular system containing 12,635 atoms—the largest molecular simulation ever modeled using a quantum computer. For details see the article on IBM’s website.

The second project, involving researchers from the RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Science (iTHEMS), the University of Tokyo, Kobe University and other institutions, used three exascale supercomputers to simulate the Milky Way at unprecedented resolution, representing up to 5.4 trillion particles comprising stars, gas and dark matter. The team also used AI to accelerate supernova calculations, enabling the galaxy to be modeled down to the scale of individual stars. For details, see the article on iTHEM’s site.

The Gordon Bell Prize winner will be announced at SC26, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, to be held in Chicago from November 15 to 20.