Research IT Services August 2014 Service report

Every month we publish a report on Research IT services across UCL. The full report in PowerPoint format can be found here:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research-it-services/docs/RITS-report-august14

Highlights this month include:

• Research training is high on the agenda with RITS developing new courses in Python and C++. These are being developed in conjunction with the Centres for Doctoral training, CMIC and the Graduate School. This is part of a continued drive to realise UCL’s strategic goal (in the UCL 2034 plan) of becoming “a global leader in the integration of research and education”
• The Legion HPC availability was very high in August with almost 100% service and core availability. The Legion slowdown measure indicates the service is not highly contended and job wait times remain low.
• The IRIDIS regional HPC service showed strong usage from UCL. This month, though agreement within the SES consortium, UCL expanded its utilisation of IRIDIS to a 60.7% share of this large HPC. Demand for the service was such that this additional capacity was fully utilised in the first month of introduction.
• EMERALD utilisation remained high, above 80%, on our regional GPU service.
• In a significant new addition to the IRIS service, the UCL research world map is now LIVE in IRIS, (https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris) where one can find the main link to the world map. One can hover over any country or use the drop down to get to a specific area, and then click on any country to see the actual UCL research activities and then follow through into the detail on these research activities within IRIS. This new IRIS feature provides an exciting way to look at UCL research activities and also demonstrates the incredible global reach of UCL’s research.
• UCL’s Data Safe Haven service (IDHS) managed by IT for SLMS, has grow significantly with over 700 researchers now trained on Information governance awareness, allowing them to safely use the service and manage their confidential and sensitive data. In addition over 80 IG toolkit registrations are completed or in progress. Furthermore the service has now expanded outside of the SLMS school to include users in Laws and MAPS who have sensitive or confidential needs.
• The Data Safe Haven service was officially awarded its ISO 27001:2013 certification by the British Standards Institute in August. ISO 27001 is an independent information security standard, published by the International Standards Organisation and the International Electrotechnical Commission. Certification provides assurance that the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data are properly protected when using the Data Safe Haven. This is more than just a high quality technical infrastructure – it covers policies, processes, training and continual improvement of all aspects of the Data Safe Haven. Congratulations go to Anthony Peacock and all the teams involved.

Gavin McLachlan, Director, Research IT Services, UCL