The roots of Research IT are embedded in Manchester Computing, which was the precursor to our current Directorate of IT Services. Manchester Computing was home to various research-focussed departments over the years, including the Computer Graphics Unit (CGU), which became Manchester Visualization Centre (MVC) and MIMAS.
In 1997 the University won the contract to host the UK’s National Supercomputing Service – Computational Services for Academic Research (CSAR) – and this became part of the Manchester Computing fold as well. At the time CSAR ran the 7th fastest computer in the world and continued providing service until 2006.
By 2002 the UK e-Science Programme was in full swing and so teams were adding expertise in these areas too and so at this point, MVC and CSAR came together under a single name: Supercomputing, Visualization and e-Science (SVE).
In 2004 UMIST and The University of Manchester merged, and Manchester Computing became IT Services. By this time much of what SVE was doing had an external focus, supporting national services and grants, and as these projects came to an end, many people and much expertise left the University.
The Birth of Research IT
In an attempt to refocus on supporting researchers at the University, SVE became Research Computing Services, although ITS leadership at that time did not prioritise support for research, so the required investment was lacking.
The desire to invest in centralised, permanent, dedicated IT services for research at the University began to grow from 2011. Nationally, the Software Sustainability Institute was well established, and at their Collaborations Workshop in early 2012, the role of Research Software Engineer was invented.
Locally, the Computational Shared Facility was inaugurated as a high-performance computing environment, and in 2013, an internal report led by Professor Douglas Kell was commissioned to determine the necessary IT services to support research. The following year, his report recommended establishing a central pool of approximately 50 Research IT roles. Between 2014 and 2015, a prototype team was formed, leading to the official launch of Research IT in 2015.
A Decade of Progress
In 2015, the team was made up of fewer than 20 people. Fast forward to today, and the team has grown to over 100, offering a wide range of off-the-shelf and bespoke facilities and services tailored to the specialised needs of the research community. These include high-performance computing, software engineering, collaboration, training, outreach, the Research Lifecycle Programme, secure storage, and advanced data manipulation. With deep IT expertise, the team takes a collaborative approach to delivering innovative solutions for research projects with team members often cited as collaborators on research outputs.