RWI Synthetics inc. Partners with Supercomputer, ISAIC

Advancing the state-of-the-art in Edmonton, RUNWITHIT Synthetics (RWI) and the University of Alberta’s (U of A) high performance computing & resources via ISAIC (Industry Sandbox and AI Computing), have joined forces to explore massive scale Single Synthetic Environments without compute restriction in the areas of human movement and behaviour, energy transition, and cyber outages. 

RWI has a long running relationship with the U of A. 72% of RWI’s team are U of A graduates. Through RWI’s support of U of A work experience and internship programs, RWI continues to benefit from a pool of international, diverse talent.  Other RWI U of A collaborations include capstone project opportunities for both Computer Science 401 and MBA students in Strategic Management and Organization 641.  RWI is also working on some ground-breaking research into COVID-19 and Grid Resilience, recently awarded one of the few National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) COVID-19 Alliance projects outside of Health, with Dr. Hao Liang, the Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Energy Systems.

Continuing this relationship, RWI is beginning to work with ISAIC. ISAIC provides high performance computing & resources and was originally funded by Western Economic Diversification and  is housed at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Engineering providing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), like RWI, with affordable, tailorable and scalable infrastructure and high-performance computing resources. 

“ISAIC’s team takes away the worry by keeping up to speed with the fast evolution of computing infrastructure,” says Myrna Bittner, Co-founder of RWI, “our IT team and management can focus on what is core to RWI’s business with confidence our data is secure, stays local and IP remains ours.” 

ISAIC

ISAIC’s mission is to accelerate adoption and commercialization of AI technology in Western Canada through infrastructure and applied knowledge. Entrepreneurs & innovators have access to a dedicated, open, secure cloud computing environment that can quickly scale based on the needs of local businesses.

“ISAIC was founded by a group of entrepreneurs to ensure local start-ups had access to affordable, scalable high-performance computing whenever they needed”, explains Crys Vanier, Executive Director, “our clients, future-enabling companies like RWI, are guiding ISAIC’s drive to be a local sandbox environment where companies can access diverse datasets and bring together various domain and application experts, researchers and students to solve real problems at a scale that is often out of reach.” 

RWI’s journey with supercomputers began several decades ago when RWI was given access to Cray Y-MP EL, a computer from Seymour Cray that, at the time, was gaining more widespread availability. These technologies allowed for the exploration and formulation of the many innovations that RWI has brought to market. Having this technology as a business resource in Western Canada shows commitment to the next generation of infrastructure and U of A’s investment and contribution to the technology ecosystem.

When discussing the opportunity to use ISAIC’s high performance infrastructure, Dean Bittner, Founder and CVO, said, “we are excited to be rediscovering this tradition by beginning to explore our latest generation of technology, i2, on virtual machines at ISAIC, right here in our founding city, Edmonton, Alberta. This collaboration will allow RWI to refine our technologies coming to market in the near and far future.”

RUNWITHIT is actively working to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). This project has contributed to the following SDG’s: