DIRAC-3 Operations 2019-22 - UCL

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The DiRAC-3 Facility strategy for impact and innovation delivery is well-aligned with the UK government Industrial Strategy. As such, much of our societal and economic impact will continue to be driven by our engagements with industry. Each DiRAC-3 service provider has a local industrial strategy to deliver continued high levels of industrial engagement and to explore avenues to increase innovation and industrial returns over the next three years. Progress towards the industrial strategy goals will be monitored by the Service Management Boards and the DiRAC Technical Manager and reported to STFC via the DiRAC Oversight Committee.
The "Pathways to Impact" document attached to the lead JeS form for this proposal describes the overall DiRAC-3 industrial strategy, including our strategic goals and key performance indicators.
Examples of the expected impact of DiRAC-3 include:
1) Dissemination of best practice in High Performance Computing software engineering throughout the theoretical Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear physics communities in the UK as well as to industry partners.
2) Training of the next generation of research scientists to tackle problems effectively on state-of-the- art of High Performance Computing facilities. Such skills are much in demand from high-tech industry and the cadre of highly-skilled, computationally literate individuals nurtured by DiRAC-3 will have influence beyond academia and will help to maintain the UK's scientific and economic leadership.
3) Development and delivery of co-design projects with industry partners to improve future generations of hardware and software.
4) Development of new techniques in the area of High Performance Data Analytics which will benefit industry partners and researchers in other fields such as biomedicine, biology, engineering, economics and social science, and the natural environment who can use these developments to improve research outcomes in their areas.
5) Sharing of best practice on the design and operation of distributed HPC facilities with UK National e-Infrastructure partners and providing leadership towards an integrated UKRI National e-Infrastructure. By supporting the uptake of emerging technologies by the DiRAC research communities, we will enable other research communities, both in academia and industry, to explore the value of using leading-edge technology to support their research workflows.
6) Engagement with the general public to promote interest in science, and to explain how our ability to solve complex problems using the latest computer technology leads to new scientific capabilities/insights. Engagement of this kind also naturally encourages the uptake of STEM subjects in schools.