Many fields of research rely on the collection and analysis of large data sets or on detailed simulations, both of which have significant compute and storage requirements. Moreover, while neural networks and machine learning have been the mainstay of a number of fields for some time, the rise of generative AI is providing new, powerful, but energy- and resource-hungry tools for modern research.
From astronomy and high energy physics to genetics and neuroscience and on to digital humanities, the expectation that many fields of research are facing similar challenges and concerns related to the environmental sustainability of research computing motivated the first edition of the Sustainability Conference for Responsible Research Computing (SC4RC, pronounced “scarce”) 2026. This week-long conference took place from 4–8 May, hosted by CERN in Geneva in hybrid format.
Highlights included invited talks by Jeremy Cohen, Ian Fisk, Gabby Samuel, Raghavendra Selvan, Michael Sparks, Julia Steinberger, Ben van Werkhoven, and Wim Vanderbauwhede; discipline summaries; demonstrations of carbon-monitoring dashboards; interactive sessions, a wealth of high-quality contributed talks and posters; and a public webinar, featuring Jyoti Bhogal, Laurane Fréour, Loïc Lannelongue, Kirsty Pringle, and Raghavendra Selvan. Recordings of the sessions are available on the conference’s Indico page, and a joint publication summarising the output of the conference is in preparation.
The Swiss Physical Society (SPS) sponsored several awards for outstanding contributed content: the winners were Deniza Chekrygina, Pascal Emmenegger, Laurane Fréour and Jaime Iglesias Blanco. A full list of winners, including highly commended talks and posters, can be found on the Indico page.
Just over 60% of the 150-odd registrants attended in person. To reduce the environmental footprint of the conference the catering was limited to vegetarian and vegan options only, and in-person attendees were encouraged to choose the most environmentally responsible form of transport that was available to them. Green travel top-ups to bridge the cost gap between low-cost flights and trains were offered but not utilized. Average reported travel emissions were around 400 kgCO2e per attendee, with approximately a half of the in-person attendees choosing public transport or long-distance trains, and a quarter traveling to the conference by plane, with the latter accounting for around four-fifths of the total travel emissions (assuming negligible emissions from soft mobility).
The organisers would like to thank the event’s sponsors and endorsers, CERN, the European Microbiology Laboratory (EMBL), EMBO, and SPS, everyone who made this conference a possibility and the participants who made this an engaging, productive and sometimes sobering event. We look forward to the next edition of this conference series!
Please do get in touch if you want to get involved! Further details can be found at: https://www.sc4rc.org/ and https://indico.cern.ch/event/1526482/.
