About us
Research IT's established team works to boost research quality, output, and impact – aiming to place Liverpool as a leading research computing institution.
History, evolution
Liverpool's research computing team has long supported researchers in computing technologies, primarily in provision of high-performance computing platforms. Significant strategic investment in 2022 transformed our team into Research IT, enhancing all services and bringing new offerings (e.g. software engineering, technical training, proposal consultation), with a new ambition to place Liverpool as a leading research computing centre. Enjoying continual growth since inception, Research IT now comprises three teams of technical specialists with research backgrounds across various domains, from physical sciences or engineering, to health and life sciences.
Group structure, contact details
Research IT is a group within IT Services consisting of three dedicated teams. Each team has a low volume mailing list giving the latest news and events. For general queries, please contact research-it-support@liverpool.ac.uk.
Research platforms
This team provides and develops research computing platforms, including Liverpool's high performance computing (HPC)cluster for heavyweight problems. The team studies emerging HPC technologies, consults with other HPC facilities, and works closely with the research community to ensure that platforms meet researchers' needs.
Advice is available on cloud computing, the on-demand delivery of remote computing resources - ideal for time- or performance-limited research, teaching environments, or evaluative work, e.g. proposals to fund real hardware. While funding is a significant consideration, advice covers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and certain trusted research environments (TREs) - stringently secure, collaborative workspaces for healthcare, or other highly sensitive data.
Additionally, the team provides training and workshops, advice on funding applications and specialist platforms, and helps Liverpool's researchers access external HPC facilities, managing any applications for work on national or world-leading HPC supercomputers. Contact the team to discuss HPC at hpc-support@liverpool.ac.uk or HTC at htc-support@liverpool.ac.uk.
Research software engineering (RSE)
The research software engineering team consists of specialist software engineers who work with the University of Liverpool's researchers to boost research software quality and impact, eg via advanced computing platforms (eg HPC and HTC).
Team members study emerging and best practice technologies and approaches to enhance and accelerate software development, with a particular focus on software quality and sharing topic-specific knowledge across science, engineering, health, and life sciences - supplemented by concepts in software engineering and computer science.
Additionally, the team build researcher proficiencies through training materials, workshops, and individual RSE consultations. Contact the team at rse-support@liverpool.ac.uk.
Researcher engagement
We engage with the research community to understand needs, set IT service quality requirements, and streamline these for frictionless research. The researcher engagement team is well positioned within IT Services to act as a liaison between researchers and technical or other teams, eg Business Partnering, Research Support Office, Research Data Management (libraries), Information Security, and external suppliers. Contact the team at research-it-support@liverpool.ac.uk.
Examples of typical projects and benefits
The typical projects below reveal how collaboration with Research IT substantially enhances research quality and productivity:
- In radiotherapy, a 3D tissue model was used to study radiation dose-related complications across different organs. Execution as one MATLAB simulation would have taken five months on one PC yet finished in just one day on the HTCondor pool. This optimisation enabled numerous runs and substantial model refinement, significantly raising research quality and output.
- Future medicine is personal medicine - absolutely custom-built after sequencing a patient's DNA. Towards this, an anti-epileptic drug study sought to find genetic outcome predictors, e.g. of time to finish a drug without adverse effects. 800 patients were each genotyped at 500,000 genome places with the most common variations (SNPs). Each run of this large statistical problem would take five weeks on one PC yet took less than five hours on HTCondor, facilitating considerable model analysis and refinement.
Mailing lists
Join our low volume mailing lists for the latest news and events. To sign up, email listserv@liverpool.ac.uk from your University of Liverpool account and copy the below into the email body:
subscribe <mailing-list-name> <your-first-name> <your-last-name>
where <mailing-list-name> is respectively either rse-users, htc-users, or hpc-users for software engineering, HTCondor, or Barkla cluster news. Alternatively, Barkla users may simply email hpc-users-subscribe-request@liverpool.ac.uk.
You'll then have access to all recent messages. After subscribing, you can manage your own subscription, or contact research-it-support@liverpool.ac.uk at any time to opt-out. All details are held in accordance with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the University of Liverpool's privacy policy. No personal details are passed to any third party.
Visiting us
Guests usually visit us at the Foundation building (building 765 below) at the following address:
Research IT, University of Liverpool,
Foundation Building, Brownlow Hill,
Liverpool, L69 7ZX
Other guests may visit at the IT Services building (building 224 above). See also the full campus map (or Google map), which includes car parks. See more on directions to the main campus, car parking, overnight accommodation and information for disabled visitors.
