PUNE: On its 33rd foundation day on Wednesday (March 25), the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) announced collaboration with national science institutes to perform drug repurposing simulations and discover new drugs. 

Using supercomputing, big-data analytics and artificial intelligence as the crucial tools to fight against any virus pandemic, the centre launched a program Supercomputing using AI, machine learning (ML), healthcare analytics-based research for combating coronavirus disease SAMHAR-COVID19 .

C-DAC has collaborated with laboratories of all Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), National Institute of Virology (NIV), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), start-ups and industry partner NVIDIA-- an American technology company, stated the official statement released by the centre. 

Through this initiative, the centre aims to find solutions for identifying, tracking and forecasting outbreaks of COVID-19.