In September 2019, we launched our BEAR Champion scheme to help spread the word about BEAR services, and since then the team has expanded to 20 over all 5 colleges – see our list of BEAR Champions. In the last year, we have welcomed 6 new BEAR Champions: Dr Jack Sullivan from the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, Kirsty McCready from Biosciences, Yi Miao from Computer Science, Leonard Nicusan from Chemical Engineering, Ioanna Giannakou from Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences and Ossama Shafiq from Civil Engineering.
Whilst the group meets regularly online, we held an in-person lunch/social back in September, together with a data centre tour for BEAR Champions who joined the team in 2023. Jon Hunt from the Architecture, Infrastructure and Systems Group in Advanced Research Computing led us on the tour, taking us to parts that I had never seen before, such as the electrics room! See our data centre blog posts for some more inside pictures and information.
Over the last year, our BEAR Champions have helped us by getting us talk slots at school PhD inductions, supported users in their area with using our supercomputer BlueBEAR, provided feedback on services, helped us on stalls at university events, set up an R User Group, delivered Carpentries training workshops, helped at the BEAR Challenge, are running the BEAR Conference, and many more things! In return, they are often the first to hear about job opportunities in the team & new services, get priority help with using BEAR services, and are able to network as part of a team of early career researchers whilst gaining transferable skills. One of our former BEAR Champions (Warrick Ball) is now a Senior Research Software Engineer in the Advanced Research Computing team.
Inevitably, when dealing with research staff and research students there is a high turnover due to the short-term nature of research funding. In addition, there are many schools/institutes that are not currently represented by a BEAR Champion. We are therefore always looking for new BEAR Champions who can help spread the word in their area – have a read of our ‘Join the BEAR Champion team‘ blog post and fill in the application form if you are interested, or contact us at bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk.
