{"id":5679,"date":"2025-12-08T15:26:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T15:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/?p=5679"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:53:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:53:23","slug":"team-of-undergraduate-students-wins-national-computing-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2025\/12\/08\/team-of-undergraduate-students-wins-national-computing-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Team of undergraduate students wins national computing challenge!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We were so thrilled to hear that team &#8216;Beariables&#8217; have won the national supercomputing challenge at Computing Insight UK (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sc.stfc.ac.uk\/ciuk-2025\/\">CIUK2025<\/a>)! The team of undergraduate students from the University of Birmingham are studying for degrees in the School of Physics &amp; Astronomy, and the School of Computer Science, and competed against 16 other teams from institutions across the UK in a series of online and in-person challenges. They now go on to represent the UK at the International SuperComputing Conference (<a href=\"https:\/\/isc-hpc.com\/program\/student-cluster-competition\/\">ISC<\/a>) in Hamburg &#8211; see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/computing-insight-uk_ciuk2025-activity-7403725595601170432-nqj0?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAA19iUoBwE1nZAv0M3TNVNZiK731ciEFJjY\">CIUK2025 LinkedIn post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"434\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-1024x434.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5678\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-1024x434.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-300x127.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-768x325.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-1536x651.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-2048x867.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2025\/10\/CIUK_Cluster_Chall_win2-250x106.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The winning team &#8216;Beariables&#8217; with their prizes. From left to right: Harry Vicaradge, Ewan Hallatt, Jamie Cline, Sereya Mee, Adam Wilson and Arthur Baverstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Two members of the team (Harry and Adam) were originally part of the third-placed team &#8216;Beariables&#8217; that took part in <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2025\/07\/04\/bear-challenge-2025\/\">BEAR Challenge 2025<\/a>, an increasingly popular UoB Xtra three-day event that provides taught students with access to the latest High-Performance Computing and AI-systems, as well as career talks from industry leaders. Harry and Sereya also spent a week of <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2025\/10\/08\/undegraduate-student-work-experience-in-advanced-research-computing\/\">work experience<\/a> with Advanced Research Computing back in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many congratulations to the team and we look forward to hearing about your experience in the <a href=\"https:\/\/isc-hpc.com\/program\/student-cluster-competition\/\">ISC virtual cluster challenge<\/a>, starting in March. You can read more about the team&#8217;s experience in a University news article, student story and a further blog post:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>News article &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.birmingham.ac.uk\/news\/2026\/birmingham-undergraduates-to-represent-the-uk-in-international-supercomputing-challenge\">Birmingham undergraduates to represent the UK in international supercomputing challenge<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Student story &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.birmingham.ac.uk\/study\/student-experience\/stories\/search\/bear-computing-winners-2025\">Winners of the Computing Insight UK supercomputing challenge 2025 <\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Beariables&#8217; CIUK experience &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2026\/03\/19\/students-journey-from-hpc-newcomers-to-international-competitors\/\">https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2026\/03\/19\/students-journey-from-hpc-newcomers-to-international-competitors\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were so thrilled to hear that team &#8216;Beariables&#8217; have won the national supercomputing challenge at Computing Insight UK (CIUK2025)! The team of undergraduate students from the University of Birmingham are studying for degrees in the School of Physics &amp; Astronomy, and the School of Computer Science, and competed against 16 other teams from institutions &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/2025\/12\/08\/team-of-undergraduate-students-wins-national-computing-challenge\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Team of undergraduate students wins national computing challenge!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":5678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[307,306,197,318],"class_list":["post-5679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-challenge","tag-bearchallenge2025","tag-ciuk2025","tag-cluster-challenge","tag-isc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5679"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5987,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions\/5987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/bear\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}