Imperial's new Research Computing Service

The College has established a new Research Computing Service (RCS), providing enhanced support and training for Imperial researchers.

The Service is the successor to the High Performance Computing (HPC) Service, and continues to provide access to powerful, high-end computing resources, free at the point of use for the College’s academic community. New developments include the RCS team’s support for a wider range of computational research than traditional HPC, including consultancy and training for all researchers.

Led by new RCS Manager Matthew Harvey, the team will provide support for colleagues across the research computing spectrum, from beginner to expert, and desktop to supercomputer to Cloud.

Another new appointee, Director of Research Computing Professor Spencer Sherwin, is also now in post, providing academic leadership in the important and rapidly developing area of computational research. This newly created senior academic role reports to the Vice Provost for Research, Professor Nick Jennings, and Chief Information Officer, Mike Russell.

Together with ICT’s Research Service Line Manager, Richard Favell, Spencer and Matthew collaborate to guide research computing strategy and drive service delivery. Spencer is enthused by what he’s seen so far: “I’ve been impressed by efforts over the last six months to transform and build the Research Computing Service, introducing new facilities, capabilities and support features. I look forward to seeing results as the service continues to grow, offering computational research opportunities for the College’s research community.”

To improve service availability and resilience the RCS team relocated all three HPC systems and equipment from the College’s South Kensington Data Centre to new state-of-the-art facilities operating from the Virtus Slough Data Centre. Enhanced RCS support offers weekly walk-in clinics and assistance via the ICT Service Desk. More training is also available, including regular Software and Data Carpentry courses for teaching basic research computing skills for new users.

Further building the team’s capability and capacity, a new Research Software Engineering (RSE) Team provides specialist software development services delivered by dedicated Research Software Engineers, experienced in supporting research.