September 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.
We hope you all managed to take a break over the summer and didn’t suffer too much in the extreme heat we had – read about how our data centre coped below. Several of the Research Software Group were at RSECon22 last week, whilst the Research Engagement and Data Group have held a session about BEAR in the Business School and will be at lots of induction sessions for new postgraduate researchers in the coming weeks.
In this month’s newsletter we cover:
- New! Introduction to BEAR Canvas course
- Maintaining BEAR Services in Extreme Heat
- Two New Research Software Engineer Posts Available to join BEAR
- Opportunity to join the BEAR Conference Organising Committee
- Call for Data Horror Stories
- Coding Club September Session
- Case Study on use of GPU’s for AI Techniques
- Applications for SSI Fellowships
- In-Person and Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions
New! Introduction to BEAR Services Canvas Course
We are pleased to announce that we now have a Canvas course to introduce both new and existing research staff and students to all the services on offer from BEAR, including a 12 minute video providing an overview. You can self-enrol in the course using this link: https://canvas.bham.ac.uk/enroll/E3CACD Please pass onto anyone you think will benefit, particularly new staff and postgraduate research students in your area.
Maintaining BEAR Services in Extreme Heat
We have had two instances of extreme heat this summer, one of which led to us having to stop all BEAR services to protect the infrastructure. The second time in mid-August, we put in mitigating actions which we believe allowed us to keep the storage running as normal and BlueBEAR running on a limited basis – for more information on the problem and our future plans read our blog post on maintaining services in extreme heat.
Two New Research Software Engineer Posts Available to Join BEAR
The Advanced Research Computing group that manage BEAR services is growing! We're looking for two Senior Research Software Engineers (RSE’s) to join us and help grow and diversify the University’s research software community. Apply to join our supportive and highly skilled team via this link (closing date 26th September). To find out more about what it is like to work as a RSE in our team, have a read of recent recruit Adrian Garcia’s blog post.
Opportunity to Join the BEAR Conference Organising Committee
The BEAR conference has now been running for over 10 years and was originally created to give PhD students experience in running a conference, as well as provide a showcase for the fantastic research done on BEAR. We are asking for PhD students and also early-career researchers (who can guide/help) from across the University to join the organising Committee for the 2023 Conference – please see our blog post on joining the Committee for more information.
Call for Data Horror Stories
We’re getting ready for Halloween by asking for your data horror stories! Have you got any stories of when data management went wrong for you? If so, please share (anonymously if you prefer) and we will assemble a collection to present at an upcoming Digital Research Conversation in the week of 31st October to 4th November. Most importantly we will offer tips on what to do to avoid creating more data horror stories in the future! The form to complete is available here: https://forms.office.com/r/LfxkeddMWR
Coding Club September Session
Are you new to coding and not sure where to start? Then come along to our back to basics session on Tuesday 20th September at 12pm where the BEAR team will be on hand to go through a basic example to start you off on your journey from Excel to R, Bash shell, C++ and lots in between. Book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/coding-club-back-to-basics-tickets-396526199537
Case Study on use of GPU's for AI Techniques
In this month's case study, we hear from Daniel Fenton who has been making use of our supercomputer BlueBEAR to accelerate his data processing to detect malware through AI techniques, making good use of both the CPU’s and GPU’s available on BlueBEAR. Previous case studies are available via our blog post category here.
Applications for Software Sustainability Fellowships Open
The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) have announced that applications to the SSI Fellowship Programme 2023 are now open to provide funding for individuals who want to improve how research software is done in their domains, fields and/or areas of work. The deadline to apply is Monday 3rd October – more details available here.
In-Person and Virtual BEAR Drop-in Sessions
We are holding both in-person and virtual drop-in sessions currently. In-person drop-in’s are being held once a month in a public, visible campus location, 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 – Thursday 15th September 12:30-13:30 Undercroft, Biosciences
- Via Zoom – Wednesday 21st September 13:30-14:30
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