High Performance Compute investment (Project Z) – HPC Resources Open for Application

At the beginning of the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP), one of the areas outlined for improvement was e-Research Infrastructure. This week, significant progress on this was made as The University of Manchester made a £1 million investment into a High Performance Compute (HPC) resource. For the research community, this means that researchers can do larger scale computational problems and take on research projects that previously exceeded our resources. This new HPC resource is currently free to use for any researcher who has a legitimate HPC need. The availability of this free resource can hopefully act as a catalyst to attract those new to HPC use.

See our news article to read more on how this will impact the work of researchers at the University.

Further information about these resources along with how to apply for access to these increased compute capabilities can be found here.

Incrementally build compute capacity and improve access to resources (Projects M&K) – Upcoming Workshops

Alongside our investments into HPC resources, we have also projects focusing on the improvement of compute capacity as well as access to compute resources. This has included an investment in more GPUs, high memory nodes, and increased compute capacity. The delivery for this equipment is due for the end of April.

Last year, the Research IT team held workshops to gather input on spending RLP funds on developing our computational resources on a year-by-year basis.

We are already looking ahead to next year, and feedback from our research community is important in making sure we have the right resources in place for the future.

What computational resources do you believe we should procure, to enable your research?

Come along to one of our workshops and let us know your ideas!

Wednesday 3 April (University Place)

Tuesday 9 April (Sackville Street Building)

Lunch with the RLP – Research IT Innovation Community (Project Q)

Given the success of our ‘Lunch with the RLP’ event in February, we have decided to hold a similar event, this time focused around Project Q, which aims at designing and implementing a Research IT Innovation Community. This event is open to anyone at the University with an interest in research.

Our lead speaker will be Dr Emma Finch, who is the Innovation Lead of the Research IT Innovation Community project and is currently working throughout the university to develop this community. Her focus so far has been identifying networking and collaboration opportunities currently being overlooked. Eventually she will be developing a framework through which more research partnerships can be formed. She will be followed by a couple more speakers, names will be revealed nearer the time, which will then be followed by a Q&A. Food and refreshments will be provided.

This will take place on Thursday 9 May and you can sign up here.

Find out more:

• Design and Implement a Research IT innovation community

Service to Manage Restricted Data (Project S) – Upcoming Workshops

Are you conducting research on a sensitive topic? Do you require access to sensitive or restricted data from external organisations such as the NHS, schools, the police or other government agencies? Do you work with commercially sensitive information? 

If so, we would like to invite you to our breakfast workshop to have a chat with us about your experience and future requirement of accessing and managing restricted data for your research. This will be your opportunity to shape how the University supports researchers who work with restricted data.

The project to develop a service to Manage Restricted Data is part of the Research Lifecycle Programme.

Sign up to our workshop and let us know your ideas.

Thursday 2 May (Kilburn Building)

Tuesday 7 May (Roscoe Building)

Question: How do I know if my research uses sensitive or restricted data?

The University classifies data into three classifications; Unrestricted, restricted and highly restricted data. The definitions for each can be found here.

Contact the RLP Team if you require further information

Working towards next year’s business case

Finally, most of the RLP’s focus over the past couple of weeks has been geared towards our next business case, due to be presented for governance in mid-May for a decision by the Change and IT Process Subcommittee (CITP) in June. This has included specific scoping for our ongoing projects in the coming year, as well as an introduction to projects which have not yet begun. More information about this business case will be included in the newsletters in the coming months.

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