NGS roadshow event at the University of Huddersfield

Last week saw the NGS outreach team at the University of Huddersfield for a NGS roadshow event. The local organiser was Ibad Kureshi who did a fantastic job of organising everything locally and making the day went smoothly. Ibad also did a great job of advertising the event locally meaning that we had over 30 participants at the morning roadshow and over 20 registered for the afternoon training event.

The roadshow kicked off in the usual fashion with an overview of the NGS from our Technical Director, David Wallom from the University of Oxford. Many people in the audience were not familiar with the NGS before the event or had just heard our name mentioned but were unaware of what the NGS actually does so this presentation is designed as a gentle introduction!

Following David we moved onto presentations from NGS users including Paul Martin who is a researcher at the University of Huddersfield. Paul has been using the NGS for computer modelling of thoria in order to determine its suitability for a next generation nuclear fuel. He explained how he has used DL_POLY 2 which scales very well on the NGS. Paul in particular praised the good on-line instructions/training, FAQ’s, blog and helpdesk/support which is great to hear!

Paul was followed by another user, Matt Smith from the University of Liverpool. Ibad had suggested that a presentation by an Abaqus user would go down very well due to the interest in this software package at Huddersfield. We were happy to oblige! Matt spoke about his use of Abaqus on the NGS to model lattice structures. This was a very interesting talk helped by the sample materials Matt brought along to illustrate his presentation. As Ibad had thought, Matt’s presentation prompted plenty of questions about his usage of the NGS and about his research.

David Fergusson from the training team at NeSC then elaborated on how users actually get started on the NGS and how to apply for a certificate, run jobs etc. Again there were plenty of questions showing that Huddersfield researchers are keen to use our resources!

The final presentation was by Ibad who outlined the locally available resources and how these tied in with the resources offered by the NGS. We’ve found in previous roadshows that having presentations about local resources helps the audience to visualise how the NGS fits in locally and that it is there to complement existing resources.

All the presentations from the event are available on the NGS website from the event page.