Join us at Westmere House for our 9th Digital Research Conversation (DRC)!

Our 9th DRC will be about Sustainable Computing. 

There is no question that powerful computing has environmental costs; materials are mined or made, equipment is manufactured and materials, kit and product have to be packaged and shipped; often around the globe. And this is all before we consider the huge amounts of energy required to run and maintain servers. But have you ever considered your impact as a HPC user? Ever considered how much energy each of your compute jobs consume? Ever written code that "does the job" but could be far more succinct?

In this DRC, we will hear from researchers who have taken steps to compute more sustainably and monitor their efficiency, and researchers who are making the ICT infrastructure of energy systems more sustainable. Staff from Advanced Research Computing will be there to discuss how we are working to deliver sustainable computing resources, and how we can support you. Join us to find out how you could make changes to make your research more sustainable.

We are excited to welcome four speakers to our event, who will be discussing a wide range of important topics:

Dr. Loïc Lannelongue - University of Cambridge

We will hear from Dr. Loïc Lannelongue , Research Associate at Jesus College, University of Cambridge. Loïc is interested in combining artificial intelligence and genetics to better understand human diseases, while keeping ethics and sustainability in mind. Loïc recently published an article in Nature proposing GREENER principles for sustainable computing. He also appeared on the BBC radio Naked Scientist show, where he discussed the Green Algorithms project. See a full list of publications here.

Dr. Chen Zhu - Birmingham Law School

Dr. Chen Zhu is known as Yet Another Legal Academic (a.k.a. YALA), who is committed to teaching and researching intellectual property and informational jurisprudence at the University of Birmingham. He has an abiding interest in music copyright and software-related legal issues. He is the co-editor of Music Borrowing and Copyright Law (Bloomsbury, 2023), which carefully examines the subtle relation between legitimate appropriation and illegal copyright infringement in an ever-evolving creative eco-system. He uses GNU/Linux and Emacs (a programmable text editor with a LISP dialect) for his everyday academic work and for fun. Chen will be delivering a talk entitled : "RaspbeMacs: Building a plain-text computing environment for sustainable legal research with GNU/Emacs and Raspberry Pi".

Dr. Zoya Pourmirza - Computer Science, University of Birmingham

Dr. Zoya Pourmirza is the Academic Director of Smart Systems and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Zoya's area of expertise is around the Digitalisation of Energy Systems, with a focus on digital technologies and challenges that can help energy systems achieve net zero carbon emission by 2025.  This work involves making the energy system's ICT infrastructure energy aware and cyber secure. Zoya was recently invited to speak at the Clean-IT conference 2023 in Potsdam, Germany. 

Carol Sandys - Advanced Research Computing, University of Birmingham

Carol Sandys is Head of Advanced Research Computing (ARC) and Research Engagement at the University of Birmingham. Carol's team designs, builds and supports services to meet the specialist and intensive computing needs of researchers at the University of Birmingham. Carol will tell us about how delivering sustainable computing has been on the ARC agenda for the last decade, describing the systems we have in place and the training available to support you.

This event will include lunch, and the opportunity for networking and discussion (programme tbc).