Updates from UoM Research IT

by | Apr 2, 2020 | News | 0 comments

April Top Tip – Working from home with multiple (virtual) desktops

The COVID-19 outbreak now means that most people are working from home but how do you adapt when perhaps you don’t have the same equipment as you do in your university office? Ian Cottam offers some tips on working from home with virtual desktops.

PRACE COVID-19 Project Call

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is welcoming project proposals requesting computing resources to contribute to the mitigation of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Licence Updates for Working at Home

There have been several licence updates recently in light of the current situation.  You can now download the full suite of MATLAB products, the University licence for NVivo has been upgraded to NVivo PLUS, temporary licenses are available for OriginPro, Avizo and Volume Graphics.  In addition IT Services has renewed the University’s Cyber Essentials compliance.

 

Online Drop-in Sessions

Even though we are all working from home we are still holding our regular Research IT drop-in sessions.  If you need help or advice with anything research IT related come along to our online drop-in sessions on 8 and 29 of April

Using Mobile Games to Test Hypotheses in Biological Timing

The Brighter Time mobile app, developed by the Research IT Mobile Development Service (MDS) featured as part of the University’s contribution to British Science Week this year. Find out more about how we helped researchers from the Centre For Biological Timing showcase their research.

Research Lifecycle Programme Updates

Open Workshops: Research Networking and Collaboration

The research community are invited to have their say on networking and collaboration through engagement workshops.

The Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) is investing in systems and tools to support research networking and collaboration. The programme team are keen to get input from academic staff, early career researchers, and PS staff who support research communities to help shape the future of networking and collaboration. Four workshops will be held to have your say and you are welcome to attend any that is convenient for you.

Please see the below links to register for one of the events. There is also an option to submit ideas if you are unable to attend.

Attendees will be asked to submit ideas before the workshop via a website called Well Sorted (up until Monday 20 April) and once ideas are collected, will be asked to organise / prioritise ideas (up until Monday 4 May). This will form the structure of the discussions at the workshops.

Please note: These workshops will take place online, via Zoom.  If you have any queries, please contact rlp@manchester.ac.uk 

Developing a service to manage highly restricted data

Lots of research projects make use of restricted data, such as personal medical data or confidential commercially-sensitive data, but we know that accessing, capturing or using such data can be challenging. Project S from the Research Lifecycle Programme is looking at what services and tools researchers need to be able to work securely and more easily with this data and we need to work with researchers to do this.

The team are currently doing some research to learn more about how people currently plan and run projects using high-risk data so we can understand how we might make better tools and services for researchers in the future.

A variety of different voices and experiences need to be involved so that the team can jointly develop solutions that work better for researchers and governance.  If are new or experienced in using high-risk data or if you avoid doing it because it’s too difficult then we want to hear from you.   We would also like to hear from you if you support researchers using high-risk data, for example, research support, IG, research governance etc.

The research will be in the form of short interviews – 30 to 60 minutes and will be conducted remotely.  If you’re willing to get involved, please contact:

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