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”
Category: BEAR Service
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”
BEAR PGR/ECR Conference opportunity 2025
We are starting to plan for the 14th BEAR conference – an event originally created to give PhD students experience in running a conference, as well as provide a showcase for the fantastic research done on services provided by Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR). With previous support from the Graduate School and our suppliers, … Continue reading “BEAR PGR/ECR Conference opportunity 2025”
BEAR users feature in awards for game-changing impact
We were very pleased to hear some familiar names mentioned in the recent ‘Awards for Game-Changing Impact‘. We would like to congratulate all the award winners but in this blog post, we are going to focus on those winners who make use of BEAR services to enable their research. The various BEAR services provided by … Continue reading “BEAR users feature in awards for game-changing impact”
IT Needs of Active Research Survey Progress – 18 months on
Back in the spring of 2022, the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research’s ‘IT Needs of Active Research Survey’ was released, and four months later we provided summary results and actions that would be taken in response. The 2024 survey has just gone live (19th February), and we wanted to update you on the progress made. … Continue reading “IT Needs of Active Research Survey Progress – 18 months on”
BEAR on the move!
Keen eyed users of the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) web pages may have noticed that we are in the process of relocating our intranet content to its new home on the university internet. This is due to a university-wide move to relocate all content currently hosted on the intranet. The intranet is becoming increasingly unstable, … Continue reading “BEAR on the move!”
IT Needs of Active Research Survey News – BEAR
Written by Carol Sandys (Head of Advanced Research Computing) & Stephanie Thompson Thank you to everyone who took time to respond to the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research’s (PVC-R’s) ‘IT Needs of Active Research’ Survey (pdf of questions available below), open between 23 May to 1 July 2022. Whilst the response rate was lower than in … Continue reading “IT Needs of Active Research Survey News – BEAR”
Using BEAR to build a database of global forest disturbance data
In the second case study for September, we hear from one of our BEAR Champions, Nezha Acil, about how she has made use of BEAR storage, data processing and our training throughout her PhD, based on studying global forest disturbance data… My name is Nezha Acil and I am part of Thomas Pugh’s TreeMort team … Continue reading “Using BEAR to build a database of global forest disturbance data”
How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing
Last week we attended the University’s Sustainability Town Hall where we could be found on the IT Services stand, discussing our response to the challenge of delivering sustainable supercomputing. On our agenda for more than a decade, the major breakthrough for BEAR came with the adoption of direct liquid cooling in 2015. Read on to … Continue reading “How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing”
Requesting BEAR Services – 2022 changes
In April 2022 we have made some changes to how you can request BEAR services (including CaStLeS), and also changes to free vs. premium resources. In this post we’ll set out some of the changes, and help you choose the right forms to use. These changes were authorised by the Research Computing Management Committee in … Continue reading “Requesting BEAR Services – 2022 changes”