NGS on the Road!

Earlier this week the NGS roadshow team travelled to Aston University to host a roadshow event for staff and students. The event was well attended with 25 people in attendance ranging from PhD students to ITS staff.

The talks covered topic such as what is the NGS?, getting started with the NGS and the NGS portal and job submission. There was also a presentation from one of our users – Jonathan Mitchell from the University of Leeds bravely stepped in after our original presenter couldn’t make it at the last minute. Jonathan talked about using NGS resources to understand the folding of DNA and showed some rather impressive animations.

The presentations created a great deal of discussion which carried over into lunch. There was plenty of NGS associated staff on hand to answer questions including David Wallom (NGS technical director), David Fergusson (NeSC Deputy Director of Training, Outreach and Education) and Hamza Mehammed (NeSC Senior Trainer). I was also there in my role as NGS Liaison Officer.

The feedback collected from the day was very positive with the majority of people planning on using NGS resources in the future as well as the majority of people planning on telling their colleagues etc about the NGS.

The NGS roadshow events are free to host as the NGS covers the cost of catering and staff travel. All the local institution has to do is book a room and help to advertise the event locally. The roadshows can be held just for the host institute or people from surrounding institutes can be invited as well. If you’d like to know more about the roadshows then please see the website or contact Gillian Sinclair, the NGS Liaison Officer (Gillian.sinclair(at)manchester.ac.uk).