ARCHER News
Tuesday 31th February 2020
- Urgent call for modellers to support epidemic modelling
- Best Practices for Online Training - Webinar
- ARCHER Annual User Survey 2019 - closing today
- HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme
Urgent call for modellers to support epidemic modelling
The Royal Society is coordinating a call for Rapid Assistance in Modelling the Pandemic (RAMP).
This urgent call to action is addressed to the scientific modelling community, and is a scheme to allow those with modelling skills (including data science) to contribute to current UK efforts in modelling the COVID-19 pandemic.
A willingness to work on specified tasks, and to deadlines, is needed. However, no previous experience in epidemic modelling, as such, is required of RAMP participants.
Full details of the scheme, with an online form to volunteer on behalf of your research group can be found here:
https://epcced.github.io/ramp/
If this link delivers an error message, please try pasting it directly into your browser or alternatively try: http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/research/softmatter/research
Please draw this scheme to the attention of colleagues who may be interested.
The online survey form should be filled out as soon as practicable and, if at all possible, by 5pm on Thursday 2 April. The survey form will cease to operate completely a day or two after that.
Note that RAMP does not address molecular modelling of the virus itself or of new antivirals, vaccines, etc. These avenues are already the subject of various efforts and initiatives internationally, such as http://www.hecbiosim.ac.uk/covid-19
Best Practices for Online Training - Webinar
Wednesday 8th April 2020 15:00 BST
EPCC has had substantial experience of delivering online training over several years. This includes HPC training for the ARCHER service, assessed courses for Edinburgh University’s online MSc programmes, and a large-scale introductory MOOC for the PRACE project.
In this interactive webinar we will discuss our experiences of delivering online training, including methods for supporting remote practical exercises and ways to keep students engaged. The format will be a set of four short talks from EPCC trainers, each followed by a Q&A session.
With face-to-face delivery simply not an option at present, and with the training programme for the ARCHER2 service due to start soon, we thought it was an ideal opportunity to share and discuss best practices for online training with the UK HPC community.
This online session is open to all. It will use the Blackboard Collaborate platform.
Full details and join link https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/200408-online-training/
ARCHER Annual User Survey 2019
We are committed to continually improving the ARCHER Service and would like to request your input to help us understand what is important to you, where the Service is working well and where there is scope for improvement.
The ARCHER Annual User Survey consists of just 9 questions and should take only a few minutes of your time to complete. There are opportunities to add more detailed comments if you wish.
For each survey response received, we will donate £1 to Save The Children.
We are also offering 5 prizes of 3000 kAU on ARCHER for users who complete the survey. Winners can choose to forgo the kAU prize and for each winner that does this we will donate a further £20 to Save The Children. Winners will be drawn at random from all respondents who have left contact details after the closing date of Tuesday 31 March 2020 and the winners notified by e-mail. The prizes are only available to people with existing ARCHER user accounts.
You can find the survey at:
Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. The responses will be used to try and improve the service for you and to help identify key areas for service development.
HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme
Collaborative research visits using High Performance Computing
Call for applications: next closing date 14th May 2020, for visits during the second half of 2020.
HPC-Europa3 funds research visits for computational scientists in any discipline which can use High Performance Computing (HPC).
Visits can be made to research institutes in Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain or the UK.
UK-based researchers can benefit in two ways: either by visiting a research group elsewhere in Europe, or by hosting a research visitor from another country.
Coronavirus travel restrictions: Applicants will be notified of the selection panel’s decisions around the end of June. We hope that the travel situation should be returning to normal by this time. Visits should be planned for July to December, but there can be some flexibility if there are continuing restrictions on travel at that stage.
What does HPC-Europa3 provide?
- Funding for travel, living and accommodation expenses for visits of up to 13 weeks.
- Access to world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities.
- Technical support to help you make best use of the HPC systems.
- Collaborative environment with an expert in your field of research.
Who can apply?
- Researchers of all levels, from postgraduate to full professors.
- Researchers from academia or industry.
- Researchers currently working in a European Union country or Associated State (see http://bit.ly/AssociatedStates for full list of Associated States).
- Researchers may not visit a group in the country where they currently work.
- A small number of places may be available for researchers working outside these countries - please contact staff@hpc-europa.org for more information.
How do I apply?
Apply online at http://www.hpc-europa.org
The next closing date is 14th May 2020. Closing dates are held 4 times per year. Applications can be submitted at any time. You should receive a decision approximately 6 weeks after the closing date.
For more information and to apply online, visit: http://www.hpc-europa.org/
Follow us on Twitter for project news: https://twitter.com/HPCEuropa3
