Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter
As we head into summer, we have a busy events season starting this week with the HPC-SIG in Cambridge, the Thesis Submission event for PGRs, and the BEAR Conference. Hopefully you will have seen that our summer programme of BEAR training workshops (being held online) has now been released, and you can read about how valuable the workshops were to a PhD student in humanities in this month’s featured case study.
Included in this month’s newsletter:
- News from the Advanced Research Computing team
- Baskerville update – access to GPUs
- Meet the Data Scientists – Tuesday 20 May
- OpenFOAM workshop – Friday 23 May
- ARCHER2 survey – deadline 21 May
- SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund update
- RSE Midlands 2025
- Anonymisation techniques for social science research data – Thursday 22 May
- ‘AI Shaping our Future’ seminar – Thursday 19 June
- Agents who argue workshop 2025 – Tuesday 1 July
- Case study on applying BEAR training workshops to digital humanities research
- BEAR drop-in sessions
News from the Advanced Research Computing team
We are pleased to welcome two new members to the Research Software Group, Dr Rachael Stickland and Dr Mingxue (Jean) Du. Rachael is joining as a Senior Research Data Scientist (see below on how to meet her!) and Jean is joining as a Research Software Engineer.
Baskerville update – access to GPUs
As you may be aware, funding for the Baskerville, Tier 2 HPC service operated by the University of Birmingham came to an end on 31 March 2025. Whilst the plans for Baskerville are not yet finalised, we wish to reassure University researchers that Baskerville will remain available to them until at least the end of March 2026. With the reduction in external users on the system, the University now has additional capacity available, and is taking requests for allocations for access to the 228 GPUs via the ‘request-tier2’ form.
Meet the Data Scientists – Tuesday 20 May
We are excited to invite you to the upcoming ‘Meet the Data Scientists’ drop-in session on Tuesday 20 May at 12:00-14:00 in Elm House (Room 203). This is a great opportunity to chat to our team of Research Data Scientists to find out more about the Research Data Science service and discuss how we can support your research. Coffee, tea, and cake will be provided! If you can’t make it on the day, then contact usto arrange a conversation or get advice on project scoping and costing.
OpenFOAM workshop – Friday 23 May
As part of the spring series of OpenFOAM workshops, session 2 ‘From Coding ‘Hello World!’ program to developing your own solver in OpenFOAM’ will be running on Friday May 23 at 14:00-16:00 in the Metallurgy & Materials Building (G6). The session will cover moving from basic programming concepts to advanced computational fluid dynamics solver development in OpenFOAM. For more details see the blog post on the OpenFOAM workshop series.
ARCHER2 survey – deadline 21 May
If you use the national UK supercomputing service ARCHER2 or are likely to have big compute requirements in the future, then please fill in the ARCHER2 survey. The UKRI is currently assessing the importance of ARCHER2 and benefits that it brings to the academic community and needs input to help make the case for future funding. The survey is open until Wednesday 21 May and can be found via the survey link.
SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund update
The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) recently announced that they will be running the first Research Software Maintenance Fund. The scheme will offer up to £500k for two years or up to £150k for one year ‘to support and maintain existing research software or sustain a team responsible for multiple software tools’ (deadline Friday 30 May). There is more information, now including a link to a webinar, in the Research Software Maintenance Fund blog post.
RSE Midlands 2025
Back in April, Advanced Research Computing hosted the Research Software Engineering (RSE) Midlands 2025 Annual Conference. You can find out what was covered on the day in the RSE Midlands 2025 blog post.
Anonymisation techniques for social science research data – Thursday 22 May
The UK Data Service is running a free online introductory workshop on Thursday 22 May at 10:00-11:30 to provide a foundational understanding of data anonymisation principles and practices tailored for social sciences research. Find out more and book your free place on the registration page here.
‘AI Shaping our Future’ seminar – Thursday 19 June
Professor Luisa Orsini (Biosciences) will be delivering the next ‘AI Shaping our Future’ seminar for the Institute for Data and AI (IDAI) on the topic ‘Decoding the past to predict the future: the convergence of biodiversity, pollution, and AI’. The seminar will be held at Elm House on Thursday 19 June at 12:00-13:30, please register to attend via the Forms link.
Agents who argue workshop 2025 – Tuesday 1 July
On Tuesday 1 July, the Centre for AI in Government and IDAI are hosting the in-person workshop ‘Agents who argue: bridging industry and academia to advance LLM deliberation solutions’. The workshop offers a rare opportunity for tech experts to engage directly with leading academic researchers in the field. If you are an academic interested in attending then please contact Christine directly, industry participants can express their interest via the EOI form here (deadline Saturday 31 May). Please share this call with any colleagues or contacts in industry who might be interested!
Case study on applying BEAR training workshops to digital humanities research
In this month’s featured case study, we hear from Mingjie Zhang (PhD student in Modern Languages), who has attended several BEAR training workshops to apply digital humanities methods to her project ‘Translating between minds: cognitive insights of the Dao De Jing’. By integrating tools such as R and Python, Mingjie is now able to explore large-scale text processing techniques. Have a read of Mingjie’s case study to find out more.
BEAR drop-in sessions
We are currently holding monthly in-person drop-in sessions on the first Wednesday of the month at 13:30-14:30 on the first floor of Staff House (formerly Café Aroma). We also provide additional virtual drop-in sessions via Zoom for those not on campus or who require specialist help – check the drop-in webpage for updates, as well as details on how to join the sessions. Currently scheduled dates are also listed below:
- Via Zoom – Friday 23 May, 11:00-12:00
- Via Zoom – Thursday 29 May, 10:00-11:00
- In-person – Wednesday 4 June, 13:30-14:30 – Staff House, first floor (look for our banner)
- Via Zoom – Monday 9 June, 13:30-14:30
- Via Zoom – Thursday 19 June, 11:00-12:00
- Via Zoom – Friday 27 June, 10:00-11:00
Missed last month’s newsletter?
Find April’s newsletter here. Sign up to receive the newsletter direct to your inbox by joining our bear-updates mailing list here (UoB login required), or ask to join via email at bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk