Research IT

Top Ten Blog Posts of 2019

As it’s approaching the end of the year, it seems like a good time to look back on our most popular blog posts of 2019. What generated the most interest from our blog and newsletter subscribers this year?


  1. macOS Catalina Upgrade

September's Top Tip article from Ian Cottam and Ian Hinder, two Research Software Engineers from Research IT. They advised caution regarding the September 2019 major update to Apple’s macOS – macOS “Catalina” (10.15 as a version number).

  1. Mobile Development Service Celebrates First App

The Research IT Mobile Development Service (MDS) has generated a lot of interest and has become a very popular service. This blog post celebrated the launch of their first app.

  1. 2020 The year of “Linux on the desktop”

– and it’s Microsoft that could make it happen – with WSL2 (Windows Subsystem Linux 2). Will Research Software Engineer, Ian Cottam who wrote this popular blog post, be shown to be correct in 2020?

  1. Introducing the UoM Open Science Working Group

A blog post from Andrew Stewart from the School of Biological Sciences introducing the new Open Science Working Group at Manchester was very popular.

  1. Want to use mobile apps in your research?

This Research IT club featured a presentation on our new mobile application development service. It was a very well attended event!

  1. Research IT Club Returns

The October Research IT club featured Richard Unwin (School of Medical Sciences) who described how we worked with him to build a searchable database for protein expression in Alzheimer’s Disease.

  1. Changes to Research Data Storage

In February there were changes to the way in which Research Data Storage (RDS) was provisioned and charged. This was an important announcement particularly for PIs and the research support teams.

  1. Research IT Club – Visualization and Digital Image Viewing

The February Research IT club announced the launch of our Visualization And Data Analysis Laboratory – vDAL and the launch of the university wide service – Digital Image Viewer.

  1. Help to Manage your Cloud Resources

We announced a new way for researchers to pay for the use of Cloud resources. It hopefully solves an issue for many researchers as it allows the cost to be charged to research grants.

  1. UoM UK Biobank Community June Meeting

The June meeting of the UoM UK Biobank Community featured updates from the UK Biobank conference, how to get started with UK Biobank (a great intro for new users and a good refresher for existing users!), a presentation from Research IT highlighting the best practice for bulk downloads and a speaker from Translation Manchester speaking about their activities.