Crystal structures in the BEAR Cloud

In this case study, we hear from Professor Andrew Morris (School of Metallurgy and Materials), whose research group has been making use of BEAR Cloud to aid discovery. My research group  predicts the crystal structure of materials. Experimental discovery of new functional materials can be slow, difficult and expensive.  Computational Structure Prediction allows us to … Continue reading “Crystal structures in the BEAR Cloud”

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Measuring Brexit Uncertainty: A Machine Learning and Textual Analysis Approach

Duiyi Dai (Claire), a PhD student from the Department of Economics, describes below how BlueBEAR is essential for her research into quantifying Brexit uncertainty, reducing the time spent running her analysis from two months on her own device to just one day! What is your research about? The term “Brexit” was first used in May … Continue reading “Measuring Brexit Uncertainty: A Machine Learning and Textual Analysis Approach”

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The saving grace ( well on Git )

In this case study, we hear from Dr Catherine Smith, a Research Fellow and Technical Officer in the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE), who has been making use of BEAR’s code management platform, BEAR GitLab, to enable her to support researchers using online editing tools to transcribe texts. At that time the … Continue reading “The saving grace ( well on Git )”

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Machine Learning and AI use in Business & Economics

On the 24th November, Advanced Research Computing (or the BEAR team!) and researchers in the Business School and Economics presented a hybrid 1 hour session around the use of Machine Learning and AI techniques, in relation to their research areas. There was also a short demo on using the BEAR portal for Economics/Business-related software applications … Continue reading “Machine Learning and AI use in Business & Economics”

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BEAR Champion team expansion!

In September 2019, we launched our BEAR Champion scheme to help spread the word about BEAR services, and the team has now expanded to 16 over all 5 colleges – see our list of BEAR Champions. In the last year, we have welcomed 6 new BEAR Champions – at least one from each College: Jack … Continue reading “BEAR Champion team expansion!”

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Predicting weather impacts using GPU-accelerated high-performance computing

You may not be aware, but all researchers at the University of Birmingham can request access to our Tier-2 (national) supercomputer, Baskerville. Dr Xilin Xia from the School of Civil Engineering describes below how Baskerville is essential for his research into predicting flooding… What is your research about? Due to Climate Change, we are seeing … Continue reading “Predicting weather impacts using GPU-accelerated high-performance computing”

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Covid made me do it….

In November’s case study, we hear from researcher Gabrela da Silva Xavier who has been making use of BEAR’s storage and data processing power for imaging and RNA-sequencing data, in both her research and teaching… My name is Gabriela da Silva Xavier. I am an Associate Professor based at the Institute of Metabolism and Systems … Continue reading “Covid made me do it….”

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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”

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