March 2023 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.

This month, we are continuing our BEAR on Tour (#BearonTour) series with a visit to Prof Ole Jensen, Co-Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health in the School of Psychology. Find out about the group’s research in the Bear on Tour blog post. Read below to find out more about upcoming events, including the BEAR Conference and BEAR Challenge plus a case study on how a researcher has benefitted from using the BEAR Research Software group.

In this newsletter we cover:

BEAR outage April 21^st to 25^th
BEAR Challenge 2023
12^th BEAR PGR Conference – extended deadline
RSE Midlands Coding Club March session
CFD Special Interest Group seminars
MATLAB Simulink Onramp session
Case study on using a BEAR hosted website to map and measure crimes
In-Person and Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions

BEAR outage April 21st to 25th

Further to our notice that we need to complete an upgrade to the cooling system in the data centre, we are still waiting for contractors to confirm but it is anticipated that the dates for the BEAR services shutdown will be from 9am on Friday 21^st April until Tuesday 25^th April at 5pm. For further details, please see our blog post on the extended BEAR outage here.

BEAR Challenge 2023

We are pleased to announce that booking is now open for the BEAR Challenge 2023! The challenge will be held over three days from Monday 19^th to Wednesday 21^st June and is open to teams of undergraduate or taught postgraduate students. Students will get access to our Tier 2 national supercomputer, Baskerville, with its state-of-the-art GPUs to run a series of challenges to give them experience in using High Performance Computing plus hear career talks from industry-leading experts.

Please pass this on to any relevant taught students in your area (a working knowledge of a programming language is required). Further details and a booking link can be found via our Eventbrite page.

12th BEAR PGR Conference - extended deadline

The BEAR PGR Conference Committee have extended the deadline for PGRs to submit abstracts to present their research at the 12^th BEAR Conference being held on Wednesday 19^th & Thursday 20^th April. For more details and the abstract submission form (deadline Tuesday 28^th March) see the BEAR Conference 2023 page, where you can also register to attend.

RSE Midlands Coding Club March session

The next RSE Midlands Coding Club event will be held on Wednesday 15^th March at 2-3pm in the ERI building, room G53 or you can attend online via Zoom. John Kings from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences will be giving a talk entitled ‘Journeyman Coder: bits to bytes – programs to apps’. John’s presentation will cover his experiences of coding, as well as the history of coding, presented through 4 case studies. Keep updated via the rse-midlands website or on Twitter @RSE_Midlands.

CFD Special Interest Group session

The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Special Interest Group at the university are meeting for two upcoming seminars:

On Friday 24^th March at 11am Dr Luis Priegue from Welsh Water will be discussing the role of hydrodynamics modelling in engineering practice. This seminar will be held in-person in the Learning Centre, room LG15.
On Tuesday 28^th March at 10am, Michael Doherty from ANSYS will be providing an overview of CFD applications to industry. This seminar will be held in-person in the School of Engineering, room 127 and will include refreshments.

MATLAB Simulink Onramp session

The MATLAB Special Interest Group are also meeting at the university this month on Tuesday 28^th March in the Engineering building (Y8), room ENG-126 between 17:30-19:30. Liz Myers will be leading a Simulink Onramp session, for more information please contact Liz at EXM806@student.bham.ac.uk.

Case study on using a BEAR hosted website to map and measure crimes

In this month’s featured case study, Dr Rowland Seymour from Mathematics explains how the BEAR Software Group helped him host a website and improve its accessibility, allowing him to run a survey to gather data to map and measure crimes against women and children. Results from the study have fed through into discussions in Parliament for Government to tackle the issues raised.

In-person and virtual BEAR drop-in sessions

We are currently holding both in-person and virtual drop-in sessions. In-person drop-ins are held at least once a month in a variety of campus locations, with additional virtual drop-in sessions via Zoom for those not on campus or who require specialist help, so that we can find a relevant member of the team.

Further details, including how to join the virtual sessions are available on our drop-in webpage. Upcoming dates are also listed below:

In-person – Tuesday 21^st March, 12:30 – 13:30, Main Library Foyer
Via Zoom – Thursday 23^rd March, 13:30 – 14:30
Via Zoom – Monday 3^rd April, 13:30 – 14:30

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