BEAR Challenge student teams compete in national Cluster Challenge

Two of the top-performing student teams from BEAR Challenge 2024 have gone onto compete in a national student cluster challenge. Online challenges began in October and culminated in three days of in-person activities in Manchester, where they competed with 14 other teams from universities across the UK at Computing Insight UK (CIUK). From the start … Continue reading “BEAR Challenge student teams compete in national Cluster Challenge”

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Graduate Systems Engineer vacancy at UoB

If you want to make a difference and are fascinated by how technology works, come and join a leading team responsible for supercomputing and allied services at the University of Birmingham! The Advanced Research Computing team that runs Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) services is looking for a graduate (recently graduated or in final … Continue reading “Graduate Systems Engineer vacancy at UoB”

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HPC Wire Award 2024 winners!

For the second year running (see previous awards), we are pleased to announce that a research group who use our advanced computing facilities has been recognised as award-winning in the HPCwire 2024 awards! Advanced Research Computing is very proud to provide the BEAR computing facilities to support life changing research at the University, which has … Continue reading “HPC Wire Award 2024 winners!”

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2024 IT Needs of Active Research Survey results

We were pleased to see a 54% increase in responses to the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research (PVC-R’s) ‘IT Needs of Active Research Survey 2024’ compared to the previous survey in 2022. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond and to share their views. The Survey aims to understand the IT you need … Continue reading “2024 IT Needs of Active Research Survey results”

Upcoming maintenance in December and January

As part of the standard maintenance cycle, as usual there will be an extended shutdown of Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Services around the second week of December to carry out major maintenance. This year there are additional major pieces of work to complete which mean more downtime than in previous years: The complexity … Continue reading “Upcoming maintenance in December and January”

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Building professional skills via an internship

Back in Autumn 2023, we were pleased to have an intern join us for 3 months for their Professional Internship for PhD Students (PIPS) placement, as part of the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP). You can find out what PhD student Kirsty McCready got up to in the article below. The MIBTP is a … Continue reading “Building professional skills via an internship”

Reflections on the BEAR Challenge 2024

In this blog post, we hear from Ivan Korniichuk, a member of the third-placed team in BEAR Challenge 2024, who gives his perspective on the recent event. I am delighted to announce that our team “return -1” achieved 3rd place in the BEAR Challenge 2024! Participating in this intensive three-day event at the University of … Continue reading “Reflections on the BEAR Challenge 2024”

BEAR Challenge 2024

We welcomed 50 undergraduate and postgraduate taught students to the 5th BEAR Challenge (#BEARChallenge2024), held over 24-26 June, 2024. Due to room constraints, we could only fit in 10 teams, so unfortunately had to turn away over 50 additional students who had applied. This year, we welcomed teams with students from Computer Science, Physics, Philosophy, … Continue reading “BEAR Challenge 2024”

Work experience in Advanced Research Computing

Back in May, two students from year 10 did their work experience within the Advanced Research Computing team at the University of Birmingham. You can find out how their week went below, as they describe their first-hand experience. Who we worked for During our week of work experience we worked alongside Dr Stephanie Thompson of … Continue reading “Work experience in Advanced Research Computing”

February BEAR newsletter

Welcome to the BEAR Newsletter, bringing you the latest news from the BEAR team (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research), as well as other relevant computing and data-related news from both within the University of Birmingham and outside. Every two years we run a survey to establish the IT needs of researchers, and this enables us … Continue reading “February BEAR newsletter”

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