Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter
Earlier this month, members of the Research Software Group led the RSE Midlands 2025 meeting at The Exchange featuring a wide range of talks showcasing research software, from Research Software Engineers (RSEs) through to researchers – we will provide a summary of the event in a future newsletter. Yesterday was the last day of maintenance for BEAR services, thank you to our users for their patience throughout this period. The work will enable us to proceed with our plans to improve resilience of the Research Data Store – find out more in the planned work blog post. We hope all our readers have a lovely Easter break!
Included in this month’s newsletter:
- Associating articles on Pure with BEAR services
- BEAR Conference 22 May – register to attend
- Midlands Innovation Open Research week – 6-9 May
- SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund
- Postgraduate Research Experience Survey
- HPC summer school for undergraduate students in Edinburgh
- Case study booklet – volume 4
- BEAR drop-in sessions
Associating articles on Pure with BEAR services
Did you know that Pure (the University of Birmingham’s Current Research Information System) is able to show how much research activity is supported by BEAR services? You can help to develop this data by adding relations between your outputs, activities, projects, etc. In order to do this you will need to add BEAR as a facility to your research output, see the Pure and BEAR SharePoint page for further advice.
BEAR Conference 22 May – register to attend
The BEAR Conference Committee are busy preparing an exciting line up of talks and posters from PGRs across the University who use BEAR services, as well as keynote speakers covering various topics around sustainable computing, including Loïc Lannelongue, Xilin Xia and Alessia Costa. Book your free place to attend the Conference on Thursday 22 May via the BEAR Conference webpages.
Midlands Innovation Open Research Week – 6-9 May
Open Research Week 2025 will take place online from 6-9 May bringing together all eight Midlands Innovation partner universities for the first time to promote and celebrate open research practices. One of the talks on 8 May will be by Hazel Wilkinson from the University, who will be discussing ‘Computer vision for old books: open research in the digital humanities’, featuring the Compositor website developed by the Research Software Group. Find out more and register for sessions via the Open Research Week 2025 webpage.
SSI Research Software Maintenance Fund
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”. The closing date for Expressions of Interest (EOI) is currently scheduled for Friday 30 May 2025. Find out more in the Research Software Maintenance Fund blog post.
Postgraduate Research Experience Survey
The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) is open to all eligible postgraduate researchers at the University. The survey covers questions relevant to IT resources, facilities and support necessary for research, and we encourage PGRs to fill out the survey to help improve the experience of current and future PGRs – find out more on the University PRES webpage (closing date 27 May).
HPC summer school for undergraduate students in Edinburgh
Whilst we are running the increasingly popular BEAR Challenge for taught students in June, another opportunity is available for a small number of undergraduate students to attend a 2-week High-Performance Computing summer school in Edinburgh, run by EPCC. Running from 14-28 June, students will have access to ARCHER2, one of the UK’s most powerful supercomputers with over 700,000 CPU-cores. Find out more via the summer school webpages (closing date Monday 28 April). Please pass on to relevant students (undergraduates with at least one year of study left) in your area.
Case study booklet – volume 4
Are you interested in how researchers at the University use our various services in their research? Covering a wide variety of disciplines from economics through to medicine, our compilation of case studies provides 17 different examples highlighting the breadth and variety of research supported by the Research Data Store and BlueBEAR supercomputer. Have a read of the case studies booklet here. If you would like to showcase your amazing research and write a case study/blog post, then please contact us at bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk.
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 – Wednesday 30 April, 13:30-14:30
- In-person – Wednesday 7 May, 13:30-14:30 – Staff House, first floor (look for our banner)
Missed last month’s newsletter?
Find March’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