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Research IT News

Reflections and Futures from Manchester Research Software Community

People sitting in a tiered lecture theatre listening to a person speaking at the front of the room
People sitting in a tiered lecture theatre listening to a person speaking at the front of the room
Aman Goel,

The Spring meeting of the Manchester Research Software Community featured a presentation on GitHub Project Automation as well as breakout groups to discuss the next steps for the group. Aman Goel reflects on what the community has achieved so far and their plans for the future.

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UoM UK Biobank Users Wrap Up for 23/24

A couple sitting on camping chairs chatting whilst the sunsets
A couple sitting on camping chairs chatting whilst the sunsets
Nils Muhlert, Charlotte Woolley,

The last UoM UK Biobank Users meeting of the academic year recently took place but there is still plenty of activity going on over the summer!

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Creating the Next Generation of Research Software Engineers

Photo of a group of young college students from behind looking at a teacher
Photo of a group of young college students from behind looking at a teacher
Andrew Gait,

Andrew Gait from the Research Software Engineering team recently spoke at a local Manchester college careers day about his experience of working as a Research Software Engineer.

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Research IT at Collaborations Workshop 2024

conference audience
conference audience
Aman Goel, Scott Archer-Nicholls,

Aman Goel and Scott Archer-Nicholls from the Research Software Engineering team attended the recent Collaborations Workshop (CW24). Here they share some of the highlights from their time at the event.

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Upskilling Environmental Scientists in Software Development

Image of a Mac keyboard
Image of a Mac keyboard
Anja Le Blanc,

At the end of March, members of our Research Software Engineering (RSE) team ran a Carpentries-style training course for environmental science researchers in how to create research software. Could we offer something similar to YOUR PhD students and early career researchers?

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Announcing Hardware Upgrades to iCSF/Incline

Lines of vertical binary code radiating out into concentric circles, the code is overlayed on a background of concentric circles of blue dots which increase in size as they radiate away from the centre point.
Lines of vertical binary code radiating out into concentric circles, the code is overlayed on a background of concentric circles of blue dots which increase in size as they radiate away from the centre point.
Vicky Short,

If you're a user of the interactive Computational Shared Facility (iCSF)/incline system, you might want to take note of some improvements. These changes, carried out in July 2023, provide significant enhancements to the system's performance and capabilities.

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Virtually Working or Virtually Playing?

Vicky Short,

The February VR@Manchester Club’s community event showcased a diverse range of extended reality (XR) applications from across the University’s research community.

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A Meeting of Agile Minds

Aman Goel,

The second meeting of the Manchester Research Software community featured two presentations: the first on the use of agile practices in research software; and one on the recently launched University instance of GitHub Enterprise. The presentations are now available to the University research community.

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Open Science and the UK Biobank

Gillian Sinclair, Nils Muhlert, Vicky Short,

The recent UoM UK Biobank Users Group meeting featured two presentations: the first on the importance of open, reproducible research; and one on using the Research Analysis Platform (RAP) to analyse the UK Biobank database. The presentations and meeting recording are now available to the University research community.

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Agile Methods for RSEs

Ann Gledson, Adrian Harwood,

The first half of 2024 will see our Research Software Engineers (RSEs) collectively upskill their approach to project and service management through a combination of internal and external training. Read on to find out more.

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Version Control for Jupyter Notebooks Using Jupytext

Jonny Taylor,

Jupyter notebooks are a widely used tool for coding in Python and Julia, but they don't always work well with version control software like Git. Research Software Engineer Jonny Taylor investigates a solution.

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Developing a Data Stewardship Community

Eleanor Warren,

Eleanor Warren, Research Services Librarian in the Library Research Data Management Team, explains current work to develop the model for Data Stewardship at The University of Manchester, including establishing a community to raise awareness of data stewardship.

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