If you, as a researcher, are thinking of requesting help from our team of Research Software Engineers (RSEs), you may want to know what skills they have. By 'skills' we mean everything from programming languages through specification, methods and testing (to name just some). Ian Cottam describes how we've made it easy to find out.

Thank you to everyone who came along to the first Research IT club of the academic year. If you were unable to attend, all the presentations are now available at the links below. We had some great presentations on how our RSEs built a searchable database for Alzheimer’s Research and the first case study of our Cloud bursting in action.

When researchers Drs Gary Motteram, Susan Dawson and Amanda Banks Gatenby from the School of Environment, Education and Development wanted to run analysis on WhatsApp messages, they came to Research IT for help.

Did you know that the correct costs for Research IT services have to be included in your research grant application before you submit? These services and costs are highly dependent on the nature of your research so it’s important that you get them right. Come along to our Research IT Costing Clinic on the 22^nd of October to find out more.

This latest instalment of our Top Tips blog posts is sure to be of interest to users of our popular Condor Pool. Ian Cottam, Research Software Engineer (RSE) in Research IT, has put together some handy tips for you to get the most out of this great computational resource.

Our Research IT club returns next month! Come along to see our services in action through researcher presentations and to hear the latest research IT news. October sees Richard Unwin from School of Medical Sciences describe how we worked with him to build a searchable database for protein expression in Alzheimer’s Disease that has now been released online.

Ian Hinder, Research Software Engineer (RSE) from Research IT recently attended a GPU Hackathon at the University of Sheffield. In this blog post he explains the outcomes of the event and the benefits of having research software engineers involved in research projects.

This month’s Top Tip article comes from Ian Cottam and Ian Hinder, two Research Software Engineers from Research IT. They advise caution regarding the September 2019 major update to Apple's macOS - macOS "Catalina" (10.15 as a version number).

At Research IT we know how busy researchers are, and how talking face to face can be the easiest way to communicate a problem or complex research idea. That's why every other Wednesday in term-time we host drop-in sessions across across campus so you can talk to our experts in person about anything research computing related.

Research IT's Visualization and Data Analysis Laboratory (vDAL), has moved to B42, Sackville Street Building. Don’t worry though, it’s just around the corner from its previous location!

Back in June we announced some changes in Research IT management. We are now pleased to announce that, following the recent open competition, Robert Haines has been appointed as Head of Research IT.

The popular conference, Computing Insight UK (CIUK), returns to Manchester again in December with the main theme of "Computing the Future". Students who are interested in attending can submit a poster abstract which, if accepted, will grant them free registration to the event including the CIUK exhibition and full programme of presentations and breakout sessions.