In this case study, we hear from Dr Kelsey Joyce, a Research Fellow in the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, who is working to understand whether wearable sensors can help predict acute mountain sickness in trekkers at high altitude. For thousands of trekkers every year, the journey to Everest Base Camp is the … Continue reading “From Everest Base Camp to Birmingham: can wearable sensors predict altitude sickness?”
Author: Yajie Zhang
We’re recruiting! Permanent Grade 7 Research Software Engineer (DevOps and Automation)
Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at the University of Birmingham is seeking to appoint a Research Software Engineer (DevOps and Automation). This is a permanent post in the BEAR Apps team, part of the award-winning ARC team, which delivers the Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) and operates the UKRI-funded Baskerville National Capability for Accelerated Research. … Continue reading “We’re recruiting! Permanent Grade 7 Research Software Engineer (DevOps and Automation)”
Summer 2026 BEAR Newsletter
Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter This month’s Editor: Stephanie Thompson In Advanced Research Computing, we’ve been welcoming lots of new starters this month, some of whom will be supporting the Baskerville National Compute Resource, which was turned on for the first time last week! Find out how to be one of the first … Continue reading “Summer 2026 BEAR Newsletter”
June 2026 BEAR Newsletter
Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter This month’s Editor: Debbie Carter Last week we were excited to welcome 60 undergraduate and taught postgraduate students to BEAR Challenge 2026! Supported by many members of the ARC team, they experienced High Performance Computing (HPC) for the first time and heard about career opportunities in this field. The … Continue reading “June 2026 BEAR Newsletter”
Reflections from the 15th BEAR Conference 2026
The following blog post has been written by Yaru Zhou, who is from the organising committee of the BEAR Conference 2026. The 15th Annual BEAR PGR Conference brought together postgraduate researchers from across the University of Birmingham for a day of interdisciplinary discussion centred around this year’s theme: AI x Integrity. Sponsored by Lenovo and NVIDIA, … Continue reading “Reflections from the 15th BEAR Conference 2026 “
May 2026 BEAR Newsletter
Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter Members of the team attended a great BEAR PGR Conference at the end of April on the theme of AI, research integrity and ethics. There were some really thought-provoking talks on the implications of AI and some interesting examples of PhD research from across the university. The event was organised … Continue reading “May 2026 BEAR Newsletter”
April 2026 BEAR Newsletter
Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) Newsletter This month’s Editor: Yajie Zhang April brings an exciting new chapter for the Advanced Research Computing team as we are delighted to welcome a new Head, Dr Andrew Edmondson (Ed), to lead the team into its next phase. Alongside this, we’re also delighted to have two new Research Software Engineers joining … Continue reading “April 2026 BEAR Newsletter”
Research project: Exploring Julia for High-Performance Computing
This project was initiated and led by Dr Vincenzo Brachetta and carried out by PhD researcher Ritesh Moon at the University of Birmingham. Conducted between January and February 2026, it evaluated the performance and practical usability of Julia on BlueBEAR, the University’s institutional high-performance computing (HPC) platform. BlueBEAR supports multi-core CPU workloads, distributed execution across nodes, and GPU-accelerated computation, with … Continue reading “Research project: Exploring Julia for High-Performance Computing”
Understanding multi-agent learning through large-scale simulations
In this case study we hear from Tuo Zhang, a researcher working in Machine Learning, who has been using BlueBEAR to run large-scale simulations of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms. His research focuses on understanding how learning agents behave when interacting with each other in complex and changing environments. In many real-world systems, decision-making is not performed … Continue reading “Understanding multi-agent learning through large-scale simulations”
New Head of Advanced Research Computing
We’re pleased to share that Dr Andrew Edmondson (Ed) has been appointed as the new Head of Advanced Research Computing (ARC), which is also highlighted in a recent ARC story on the University Sharepoint. Many of you will know Ed from his previous roles as Deputy Head of ARC and founder and leader of the … Continue reading “New Head of Advanced Research Computing”