2019 BEAR PGR Conference On Friday 12th April over 50 researchers gathered in the Alan Walters building for the 9th PGR conference for a packed day of presentations and posters. The conference was opened by Dr Hassan Hemida who explained how computational fluid dynamics is used to model and analyse the effect of tunnel pressure, … Continue reading “2019 BEAR PGR Conference – an attendees’ perspective”
The Hacker Within – what’s in it for me?
Do you want to do data analysis reproducibly? Come to The Hacker Within! The Hacker Within is an informal peer learning group for sharing skills and best practices for research computing and data science. The group meets monthly and invites talks from its members. If you would like to join the mailing list, please email … Continue reading “The Hacker Within – what’s in it for me?”
Making Sense of Your Data!
We welcomed a sell-out crowd to our fourth Digital Research Conversation on Tuesday 9th April, to discuss ‘Making Sense of your Data’. After some networking whilst munching on pizza and brownies, it was onto the talks and Nina Vyas from the Dental School introduced us to the use of machine learning for analysing microscopy images. … Continue reading “Making Sense of Your Data!”
Stabilising BEAR
Over the past few months we’ve had a number of service issues with BEAR and this is something we’d really like to apologise for – we pride ourselves on providing excellent services and recently we’ve not lived up to that. Sorry about this! 🙇🏻 I thought I’d take some time to explain some of the issues … Continue reading “Stabilising BEAR”
Is Open Data Possible in the Social Sciences?…And Other Tips for Data Sharing
On Wednesday 7th November, we held our third Digital Research Conversation on Data Sharing amid torrential rain. After some well-deserved pizza, it was onto the talks and Aslam Ghumra from our team Advanced Research Computing started us off describing how the Research Data Archive has changed to become the BEAR Archive. Where previously we provided … Continue reading “Is Open Data Possible in the Social Sciences?…And Other Tips for Data Sharing”
Deploying the largest IBM POWER9 AI cluster in the UK!
Researchers at the University of Birmingham are set to benefit from the largest IBM® POWER9™ Artificial Intelligence (AI) cluster in the UK, delivering unprecedented performance for AI workloads. Working with OCF, the high-performance compute, storage and data analytics integrator, the University will integrate a total of 11 IBM POWER9 systems into its existing high-performance computing … Continue reading “Deploying the largest IBM POWER9 AI cluster in the UK!”
Research Data Storage Issues and Plans
Over recent months, many of you will have direct experience of some instability in the core storage that underpins most of the BEAR services. The Research Data Store (RDS) infrastructure is ageing and approaching capacity. The better news is that plans for its replacement are well advanced with the primary orders already with suppliers. We … Continue reading “Research Data Storage Issues and Plans”
HPCwire award winners!
We’re really pleased to announce that again in 2018, University of Birmingham has won an HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award, this year for Best Use of HPC in Manufacturing! Each year the Advanced Research Computing team put in a number of nominations for these prestigious awards to help showcase the research using BEAR and HPC services … Continue reading “HPCwire award winners!”
The launch of our new Research Data Centre
On 21st June 2018, the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team celebrated the launch of our new Research Data Centre. As the first purpose built, water-cooled, research focussed UK Data Centre, Data Centre Managers and architects of HPC systems were keen to attend and find out more about this ambitious project. The day had a technical … Continue reading “The launch of our new Research Data Centre”
BEAR Challenge 2018
As the summer term came to an end, the BEAR team invited 5 teams of students from Computer Science to take part in a series of High Performance Computing (HPC) challenges. The event was designed to give undergraduate students access to the support and technical knowledge of the BEAR team, and to promote a career … Continue reading “BEAR Challenge 2018”