Thank you to everyone who came along to the Christmas Research IT Club and to those who took the opportunity to ask questions! If you were unable to attend all the presentations are now available at the links below. There are updates on research IT infrastructure and software engineering and applications support as well as the presentations from our guest speakers - Dr Antony Payton from the Division of Informatics, Imaging & Data Sciences and Malcolm Whitehouse, CIO IT Services.

The next Research IT club will take place on the 25^th of April and will feature updates from our research infrastructure and software engineering teams. Our two feature presentations will look at how Research IT is helping to create new parallel computer architecture inspired by the human brain. There will also be a presentation from IT Services on the planned changes to staff and cluster desktops across the university.

IT Services currently supply a basic Lenovo research workstation for those performing more complex computational tasks and who require some extra power. Full details of these workstations can be found in the ITS Extended Catalogue. ITS are now seeking the views of researchers on these workstations and if they meet their needs.

If you use surveys in your research then IT Services want to hear from you! They are reviewing survey tools used across the University in order to provide a secure central survey tool that’s mindful of research requirements.

All staff and researchers are responsible for ensuring that any private data is kept secure, and IT Services can help you do that with your old computer equipment.

Throwing an old hard drive or computer in the bin or leaving it a loading bay, risks exposing confidential information to someone with malicious intentions. It’s usually possible to recover deleted files, and often possible to retrieve information from a faulty hard drive.

The consequences of this can be catastrophic; the University could be fined up to £500,000 for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. There’s also the possibility of confidential research data being exposed, and personal or reputational damage.

Don’t risk it.

If you have any old laptops, computer hard drives, USB drives, DVDs or even dusty old floppy disks to dispose of, bring them to B29 Pariser Building or the Kilburn Building IT Support Centre, where all the data will be securely deleted and processed appropriately.

You can can even bring old keyboards, mice and other small peripherals, but please speak to a colleague in the IT Support Centre first if you need to dispose of larger items such as desktop PCs, monitors or printers, as they may need to collect these from you.

Find out more:

• IT Services: Disposal and re-use of equipment
• IT Services: help and support

Note for staff and researchers in labs: If your IT equipment is currently in a lab which requires decontamination before disposal, please ensure this takes place before you remove it.