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NAISS SENS

Learning outcomes

  • This is a short overview of NAISS SENS projects in the context of NAISS
  • To have heard about Bianca and Arrhenius, and expected changes that will come under 2026

NAISS

The National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) is funded by the Swedish Research Council with the instruction to provide free-at-the-point-of-use compute and storage resources on a national level to satisfy all needs.

On a national level means that systems should be larger than what is reasonable for a single university to procure.

NAISS SENS service

The services appropriate for handling sensitive personal data are traditionally known as NAISS SENS.

Data Processing Agreements

Most universities have a general Data Processing Agreement with NAISS that covers the use of NAISS SENS. The list of universities with an agreement is currently kept up to date on the UPPMAX web.

NAISS SENS in SUPR

Proposals for projects are submitted in the NAISS project and user portal, SUPR. Until the end of 2026, NAISS SENS proposals were submitted and handled separately from other proposals.

This is no longer the case. There are no more separate NAISS SENS rounds. However, SIMPLER, a health registry data infrastructure that uses Bianca to make its data available, has its own round in SUPR, because SIMPLER pays for these resources and handles the proposals itself.

In order to get a Bianca project, a PI must now make a normal NAISS proposal and simply add Bianca to it as a resource.

Doing so activates a few functions in SUPR:

  • It adds a text field asking you to provide information necessary for GDPR compliance.
  • It adds a requirement for the PI and proxy to enable Two Factor Authentication.
  • It disables the checkbox asking the PI to affirm that no sensitive data will be placed in the project.

Currently, there is one computer system in NAISS SENS, hosted by UPPMAX in Uppsala, called Bianca. This system was inherited by NAISS from SNIC, and was originally set up in 2016 to enable genetic and protein sequencing research on samples from living human individuals. It was set up to mimic a system called Milou, which was set up to enable genetic and protein sequencing research on non-sensitive datasets.

Although it has been renovated and extended in several stages, Bianca is now very old and has accrued a lot of technical debt.

Arrhenius SENS

NAISS is currently building a new computer system in Linköping, Arrhenius. Part of this effort will result in a new system for sensitive data.

We expect that Arrhenius SENS will become available for new projects around the middle of 2026.

Existing Bianca projects will be migrated to Arrhenius SENS during the autumn. The details are yet to be worked out.

Project owners will be contacted with instructions during the spring. While it is likely that NAISS staff can move the actual data for you, you may have to apply for a change in your ethical permit and a few projects may need to sign a new data processing agreement. Until we contact you, please relax and trust that we value your work and will ensure that your data is well taken care of.