The HANAMI project, the EU-Japan collaboration about HPC, is delighted to announce the first HANAMI High-Level Symposium, which will take place in Barcelona between 13-15 January 2025.   An initiative under the umbrella of the Digital Partnership, funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, to strengthen ties and advance collaboration between the two superpowers in High-Performance Computing (HPC), Europe and Japan, HANAMI wants to promote scientific areas around climate, modelling, biomedical and materials science, involving European and Japanese institutes, and it will assist researchers in accessing supercomputers in Japan and Europe.   This event will focus on the EU-Japan Cooperation: Advancing High-Performance Computing for Solving Global Challenges. We will also have a High-Level Stakeholder event on Europe-Japan Strategic Dialogue on High-Performance Computing Collaboration.   We invite you to join leading scientists from HANAMI to discuss the following:   Climate Change: Using supercomputing to model climate systems, predict environmental changes, and develop sustainable strategies.   Next-Generation Materials: Accelerating the discovery and design of advanced materials through computational simulations for energy, electronics, and industrial applications.   Biomedical Challenges: Enhancing personalised medicine, drug discovery, and healthcare solutions by integrating high-performance computing with biomedical research.   This event will feature keynote presentations and interactive discussions, providing a platform to strengthen synergies and shape the future of science and technology through EU-Japan cooperation.   Invited speakers     Alfonso Valencia  Barcelona Supercomputing Center     Prof. Alfonso Valencia is an ICREA research Professor, Director of the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Director of the Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute INB/ELIXIR-ES and coordinator of the data pillar of the Spanish Personalised Medicine initiative, IMPaCT. His research interest is the development of Computational Biology methods and their application to biomedical problems. Some of the computational methods he developed are considered pioneering work in areas such as biological text mining, protein coevolution, disease networks and more recently modelling cellular systems (digital twins). He participates in some of the key cancer-related international consortia. In terms of community services, he is one of the initial promoters of the ELIXIR infrastructure, founder of the Spanish and International Bioinformatics networks and former president of ISCB, the international professional association of Bioinformaticians. He is the Executive Editor of the main journal in the field (Bioinformatics OUP).     Emmanuel Barillot Institut Curie   Emmanuel Barillot is the Head of the Department of Computational Oncology at Institut Curie (U900 INSERM, in partnership with Mines ParisTech). He is also the Scientific Director of the institute Curie Bioinformatics Core Facility, which is an expert in biological data integration, omics data analysis, and support for precision medicine. He also holds a Chair in Cancer Genomics at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (PRAIRIE). Emmanuel Barillot has published ~250 articles in bioinformatics, genomics, systems biology, cancer biology, translational and clinical cancer research, biophysics and computer science.       Mohamad Wahib RIKEN Center for Computational Science     Mohamed Wahib is a team leader of the “High Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems Research Team” at RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS), Kobe, Japan. Prior to that, he worked as a senior scientist at AIST/TokyoTech Open Innovation Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Hokkaido University, Japan. His research interests revolve around the central topic of high-performance programming systems, in the context of HPC and AI. He is actively working on several projects including AI-based science, as well as high-level frameworks for programming traditional scientific applications.     Masaki Satoh The University of Tokyo/Yokohama National University   Prof. Masaki Satoh is a Professor at the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, Japan, and also serves as Vice Director and Professor at the Typhoon Science and Technology Research Center, Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Yokohama National University, through a cross-appointment. He specializes in atmospheric dynamics, tropical meteorology, climate change, and numerical modeling. A pioneer in global storm-resolving models, he has advanced weather and climate studies through the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM). His work emphasizes tropical cyclones, mesoscale systems, and satellite data analysis. Prof. Satoh has contributed as a Lead Author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and holds key leadership roles in Japanese and international meteorological organizations, including the Meteorological Society of Japan and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society.     Koichi Yamashita Yokohama City University     Dr. Koichi Yamashita received his PhD from Kyoto University in 1982 supervised by Prof. Kenichi Fukui、worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. William H. Miller at the University of California, Berkeley for 1982-84, and moved to Okazaki in 1984 to join Prof. Keiji Morokuma’s group at the Institute for Molecular Science as a research associate in the theoretical research division. In 1991 he became a senior researcher at Institute of Fundamental Chemistry led by Prof. Kenichi Fukui. In 1994 he joined Prof. Kimihiko Hirao’s group as an associate professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry, the University of Tokyo; in 1997, he became a full professor, Department of Chemical System Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, and retiring in 2018. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Tokyo and Specially Appointed Professor at Yokohama City University. His research interests include quantum reaction dynamics, non-adiabatic processes in condensed phases and modeling of energy conversion processes, such as artificial photosynthesis and photovoltaics.     Peter Dueben European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts   Peter is the Head of the Earth System Modelling Section at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) developing one of the world’s leading global weather forecast models — The Integrated Forecasting System (IFS). He is also a Honorary Professor at the University of Cologne. Before, he was AI and Machine Learning Coordinator at ECMWF and University Research Fellowship of the Royal Society performing research towards the use of machine learning, high-performance computing, and reduced numerical precision in weather and climate simulations. Peter is coordinator of the WeatherGenerator Horizon Europe project that aims to build a machine-learned foundation model for weather and climate applications and has been…