March 2022 Newsletter

Welcome to the BEAR Newsletter, bringing you the latest news from the BEAR team (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research), as well as other relevant computing and data-related news from both within the University of Birmingham and outside.

In this month’s newsletter we highlight the Research Software Group’s Annual Report, which features case studies showing how the Group is supporting researchers. There is also a survey which asks about future AI requirements you may be interested in and dates for training from BEAR and UKDS. Finally, with MathWorks we will be hosting a MATLAB event and are looking for students who can give a talk at this event.

In this newsletter we cover:

Research Software Group annual report
Coding Club March session
MATLAB SIG event
Git Canvas course
Training Workshops – spaces available (Python, R, Linux, BlueBEAR)
Turing survey
UK Data Services training courses
Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions

Research Software Group Annual Report

The Research Software Group's annual reports contains information about the Group’s work over 2021, including case studies and statistics, together with profiles of the team and their specialities: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/it/teams/infrastructure/research/bear/documents/public/rsg/rsg-annual-report-2021.pdf

Coding Club – March session

It was great to see so many of you attending our first two Coding Club sessions in January and February. Our next session will be on the 29^th March at 1pm, focussing on R, as this is a popular topic with our attendees. Our Canvas course has the video recordings and slides from the January & February sessions. The Zoom meeting link is below for the March session:

https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82195777319?pwd=bXJFZjBHSUhkMGVUbFFEd29GRFpZdz09

Meeting ID: 821 9577 7319 Passcode: 21751

MATLAB SIG event

We are holding an online MATLAB event on Wednesday 4^th May from 1-2.30pm. We will be introducing our new Special Interest Group (SIG) Chair and there will be a talk from MathWorks. There is an opportunity for student speakers to give a short talk about how you have used MATLAB in your research at this and future events. If you are interested, please contact Debbie Carter (d.j.carter@bham.ac.uk) for further details. You can sign up to attend the event here. We also have a MATLAB Canvas course with a range of information and resources available.

Git Canvas Course

Git is used to manage version control of your software, it tracks changes in the source code, enabling multiple researchers to work together. We have created an introduction to Git canvas course, signposting to training resources provided by Christopher Woods, an RSE from the University of Bristol. To self-enrol please use the following link: https://canvas.bham.ac.uk/enroll/JCRGY3

Training Workshop Dates

We have spaces available on the following training courses, for full details and booking links visit our website: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/bear-training:

Software Carpentry - Python: 15^th/16^th March AM (attend both days)
Software Carpentry - R: 21^st/22^nd March AM (attend both days)
Introduction to Linux: 24^th March AM
Introduction to BlueBEAR: 4^th April AM

Review of Digital Research Infrastructure Requirements for AI

The UKRI have commissioned the Alan Turing Institute and Technopolis to survey current and future computational demands of AI techniques. The results of this are very likely to influence future funding priorities, so if you have an opinion on what infrastructure the UK should invest in, please add your views to the survey. The survey will take approx. 15-20 minutes and can be accessed via this survey link.

UK Data Services training courses

The UK Data Service provides access to a wide range of social science data for reuse and free training courses on various aspects of data management, including around anonymisation of data.

Courses that may be of interested are listed below, a full list of courses can be found via their events pages.

How to anonymise qualitative and quantitative data, 21^st April, 11:00 – 12:30.
Data Management Basics: Introduction to data management and sharing, 28^th April, 11.00 – 12.00
Data Management Basics: Ethical and legal issues in data sharing, 29^th April, 10.00 – 11.00.
Consent issues in data sharing, 13^th May, 10.00 – 11.00

Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions

We are running our virtual drop-in sessions via Zoom as it allows us to create breakout rooms to discuss particular questions face-to-face. You can use these sessions to find out more about BEAR in general and the advanced research computing facilities we provide or we can answer specific questions e.g. running jobs on BlueBEAR, using the BlueBEAR portal or where to store your research data.

Current dates are listed here and below:

Tuesday 15^th March 10:00 – 11:00
Tuesday 5^th April 13:30 – 14:30

To join the drop-in sessions, email bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk and we will send you the Zoom link and instructions on joining. Please let us know the topic of your query, so we can find the most suitable BEAR team member to speak to you.

Missed last month's newsletter?

Find February's newsletter here.