MidPlus: A Centre of Excellence for Computational Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Centre for Scientific Computing
Abstract
We propose to establish a Centre of Excellence for Computational Science, Engineering and Mathematics (MidPlus) that serves the M1/M6 corridor from London to the Midlands, initially based on four leading universities with outstanding credentials for cross-institutional collaboration, industrial partnership, and computational research: Warwick, Birmingham, Nottingham and Queen Mary. We focus on this region because geographical proximity greatly facilitates outreach and ongoing interactions with industrial partners-especially for SMEs. MidPlus is well located to serve many organisations within the UK's automotive, aerospace, biomedical, materials and creative industries. We will extend this partnership to such companies, and other Universities, as MidPlus develops.
This Centre of Excellence will be established with an initial investment in e-Infrastructure of £3M (£1.6M from this EPSRC call and £1.4M from the partner Universities) that will provide:
* High performance Computing (HPC) through a capability cluster (Warwick; 2700 cores, infiniBand, some GPU and large-memory SMP nodes) to be combined with Warwick's existing cluster (commissioned 05/2011) to create a 6000 core cluster and so maximise scope for large massively parallel jobs; and a high throughput cluster (QMUL, 2900 cores) to facilitate projects that require multiple runs to span large parameter spaces.
* Data storage and archive facilities (mirrored at Birmingham and Nottingham for data integrity) to enable mid- and long-term storage of research data (initially ~1 PB capacity), and the management structures to enable metadata-based search and retrieval with secure implementation of a range of user-specified levels of privacy.
In the longer term we will: extend the capacity of the data store; develop an automated data-aging protocol to migrate data, successively, to appropriate longer-term storage technologies; extend the range of tier-2 HPC architecture we support; and develop greater integration of, and faster regional network connections between, the data and compute hardware.
Our collective research expertise and mastery of managing and using e-Infrastructure is as crucial to the success of MidPlus as is the equipment we will install. We will therefore build an intellectual superstructure on top of the e-Infrastructure that will:
* actively promote collaborations that cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries;
* provide a coordinated systems and administrative support team to enable industries with existing expertise to use these facilities-either to deal with the peaks in their internal demand for computer facilities or as an alternative to establishing their own;
* provide an expertise-base to nurture new industrial use of this e-Infrastructure;
* create a strategic framework within which to sustain and develop the regional e-Infrastructure.
This intellectual superstructure will enable MidPlus to offer services that add much more value than could be obtained from the bare e-Infrastructure or, indeed, from industrial cloud computing services.
This Centre of Excellence will be established with an initial investment in e-Infrastructure of £3M (£1.6M from this EPSRC call and £1.4M from the partner Universities) that will provide:
* High performance Computing (HPC) through a capability cluster (Warwick; 2700 cores, infiniBand, some GPU and large-memory SMP nodes) to be combined with Warwick's existing cluster (commissioned 05/2011) to create a 6000 core cluster and so maximise scope for large massively parallel jobs; and a high throughput cluster (QMUL, 2900 cores) to facilitate projects that require multiple runs to span large parameter spaces.
* Data storage and archive facilities (mirrored at Birmingham and Nottingham for data integrity) to enable mid- and long-term storage of research data (initially ~1 PB capacity), and the management structures to enable metadata-based search and retrieval with secure implementation of a range of user-specified levels of privacy.
In the longer term we will: extend the capacity of the data store; develop an automated data-aging protocol to migrate data, successively, to appropriate longer-term storage technologies; extend the range of tier-2 HPC architecture we support; and develop greater integration of, and faster regional network connections between, the data and compute hardware.
Our collective research expertise and mastery of managing and using e-Infrastructure is as crucial to the success of MidPlus as is the equipment we will install. We will therefore build an intellectual superstructure on top of the e-Infrastructure that will:
* actively promote collaborations that cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries;
* provide a coordinated systems and administrative support team to enable industries with existing expertise to use these facilities-either to deal with the peaks in their internal demand for computer facilities or as an alternative to establishing their own;
* provide an expertise-base to nurture new industrial use of this e-Infrastructure;
* create a strategic framework within which to sustain and develop the regional e-Infrastructure.
This intellectual superstructure will enable MidPlus to offer services that add much more value than could be obtained from the bare e-Infrastructure or, indeed, from industrial cloud computing services.
Planned Impact
The impact of the MidPlus project could be truly far-reaching, especially for small to medium sized enterprises within the our region. In MidPlus, we are proposing to establish a high-quality tier-2 e-infrastructure, with both high performance computing (HPC) and data facilities, that will serve all enterprises within the MidPlus region; this region is based around the M1/M6 corridor from London to the Midlands, and contains commercial strength in the UK's automotive, aerospace, biomedical, materials and creative industries. Most importantly, we plan to enhance the value of the facility-provision considerably by building a powerful consultancy and training framework around the strategic collaboration that is at the heart of MidPlus. This will enable commercial and industrial enterprises to recognise how they can benefit from state-of-the-art e-Infrastructure, and then develop the consultancies and internal skill-sets to reap maximum commercial advantage from using it.
To ensure we deliver full impact in the region, we will undertake a number of activities to ensure effective engagement with stakeholders in the region. These will include workshops, designed either to communicate our research expertise across disciplinary and cultural boundaries, or to brainstorm on current problems that are challenging some of the enterprises. We will also appoint business engagement officers to identify, and then nurture potential partnerships with SMEs and established industries. Activity in this area will be considerably enhanced by developing commercial partnerships with value-added companies such as OCF plc, where this is appropriate.
We will also work closely with a number of successful industry-linkage programmes our Universities are already involved in, notably the Warwick Manufacturing Group, the Horizon Digital Economy research hub and ImpactQM. These will be excellent vehicles for raising awareness of MidPlus as a precursor to identifying and evaluating benefits and then moving to engagement.
To ensure we deliver full impact in the region, we will undertake a number of activities to ensure effective engagement with stakeholders in the region. These will include workshops, designed either to communicate our research expertise across disciplinary and cultural boundaries, or to brainstorm on current problems that are challenging some of the enterprises. We will also appoint business engagement officers to identify, and then nurture potential partnerships with SMEs and established industries. Activity in this area will be considerably enhanced by developing commercial partnerships with value-added companies such as OCF plc, where this is appropriate.
We will also work closely with a number of successful industry-linkage programmes our Universities are already involved in, notably the Warwick Manufacturing Group, the Horizon Digital Economy research hub and ImpactQM. These will be excellent vehicles for raising awareness of MidPlus as a precursor to identifying and evaluating benefits and then moving to engagement.
Organisations
Publications
Hückelheim J
(2018)
Parallelizable adjoint stencil computations using transposed forward-mode algorithmic differentiation
in Optimization Methods and Software
Lu R
(2021)
Path selection of a train of spherical capsules in a branched microchannel
in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Heard CJ
(2014)
Pd(n)Ag(4-n) and Pd(n)Pt(4-n) clusters on MgO (100): a density functional surface genetic algorithm investigation.
in Nanoscale
Aslan M
(2018)
Pentameric PdAu and PdPt nanoparticles on the MgO(1 0 0) surface and their CO and O2 adsorption properties
in The European Physical Journal B
Tian K
(2016)
Periodic vs. molecular cluster approaches to resolving glass structure and properties: Anorthite a case study
in Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids
Shayeghi A
(2015)
Pool-BCGA: a parallelised generation-free genetic algorithm for the ab initio global optimisation of nanoalloy clusters.
in Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP
Afolabi D
(2017)
Positive impact of cladribine on quality of life in people with relapsing multiple sclerosis
in Multiple Sclerosis Journal
Martinez P
(2017)
Quantification of within-sample genetic heterogeneity from SNP-array data.
in Scientific reports
Sousa S
(2022)
Quantifying ethnic segregation in cities through random walks.
in Nature communications
Seresinhe C
(2017)
Quantifying scenic areas using crowdsourced data
in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
Seresinhe CI
(2015)
Quantifying the Impact of Scenic Environments on Health.
in Scientific reports
Seresinhe CI
(2016)
Quantifying the link between art and property prices in urban neighbourhoods.
in Royal Society open science
Dove M
(2020)
Quantitative understanding of negative thermal expansion in scandium trifluoride from neutron total scattering measurements
in Physical Review B
Suess CJ
(2017)
Quantum chemical calculations of tryptophan ? heme electron and excitation energy transfer rates in myoglobin.
in Journal of computational chemistry
Carnio E
(2019)
Resolution of the exponent puzzle for the Anderson transition in doped semiconductors
in Physical Review B
Song F
(2022)
Resolving nanoscopic structuring and interfacial THz dynamics in setting cements
in Materials Advances
Eberhard M
(2017)
Rogue wave generation by inelastic quasi-soliton collisions in optical fibres
in Optics Express
Zhang R
(2017)
Screening for Cu-S based thermoelectric materials using crystal structure features
in Journal of Materials Chemistry A
Knell RJ
(2017)
Selective harvest focused on sexual signal traits can lead to extinction under directional environmental change.
in Proceedings. Biological sciences
Goldsborough A
(2014)
Self-assembling tensor networks and holography in disordered spin chains
Núñez C
(2016)
Silicene-based spin-filter device: impact of random vacancies
in 2D Materials
Tian K
(2016)
Simulations reveal the role of composition into the atomic-level flexibility of bioactive glass cements
in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Pöppler A
(2017)
Single-crystal X-ray diffraction and NMR crystallography of a 1:1 cocrystal of dithianon and pyrimethanil
in Acta Crystallographica Section C Structural Chemistry
Yang C
(2015)
Solid-state diffusion in amorphous zirconolite
Yang C
(2014)
Solid-state diffusion in amorphous zirconolite
in Journal of Applied Physics
Xu S
(2015)
Stabilisation of discrete steady adjoint solvers
in Journal of Computational Physics
Bushuev Y
(2015)
Stability and Structure of Hydrated Amorphous Calcium Carbonate
in Crystal Growth & Design
Zubiaga A.
(2016)
Stance classification in rumours as a sequential task exploiting the tree structure of social media conversations
in COLING 2016 - 26th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of COLING 2016: Technical Papers
Götz DA
(2016)
Structural evolution and metallicity of lead clusters.
in Nanoscale
De Domenico M
(2015)
Structural reducibility of multilayer networks.
in Nature communications
Du J
(2019)
Structural study of bismuth ferrite BiFeO 3 by neutron total scattering and the reverse Monte Carlo method
in Physical Review B
Wright LB
(2014)
Structure and properties of citrate overlayers adsorbed at the aqueous Au(111) interface.
in Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids
Smeeton LC
(2015)
Structures and Energy Landscapes of Hydrated Sulfate Clusters.
in Journal of chemical theory and computation
Wang L
(2017)
Supercritical Grüneisen parameter and its universality at the Frenkel line.
in Physical review. E
Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe
(2017)
Supplementary Material from Using deep learning to quantify the beauty of outdoor places
Cavallaro M
(2015)
Temporally correlated zero-range process with open boundaries: Steady state and fluctuations.
in Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics
Desmond J
(2013)
Testing the inter-operability of the CHARMM and SPC/Fw force fields for conformational sampling
in Molecular Simulation
Li L
(2023)
The contribution of phonons to the thermal expansion of some simple cubic hexaboride structures: SmB 6 , CaB 6 , SrB 6 and BaB 6
in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Pracana R
(2017)
The fire ant social chromosome supergene variant Sb shows low diversity but high divergence from SB.
in Molecular ecology
Römer RA
(2016)
The flexibility and dynamics of protein disulfide isomerase.
in Proteins
Hill EM
(2018)
The impact of surveillance and control on highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in poultry in Dhaka division, Bangladesh.
in PLoS computational biology
Shayeghi A
(2015)
The Nature of Bonding between Argon and Mixed Gold-Silver Trimers.
in Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)
Description | This grant was to establish a regional high-end e-Infrastructure centre (MidPlus), serving the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham and QMUL, and looking to develop links with other Universities and industry in the London/Midlands region. We have established a range of facilities, including High Performance and High Throughput Clusters and a (mirrored) PB data store that has now been fully used and servicing this community for three years. |
Exploitation Route | This grant provided a service, and this service is being used by many researchers in Universities and industry to tackle their specific R&D problems. |
Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
URL | http://www.midplus.ac.uk |
Description | This service has prompted concerted effort between the four member Universities to develop ways to interact cooperatively with Industry in the area of Scientific Computing and e-Infrastructure exploitation. This is an ongoing development. the establishment of the Centre has also led to the formation of a network with four other EPSRC-funded Regional Centres, associated with EPSRC grant EP/M02010X/1 |
First Year Of Impact | 2011 |
Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Impact Types | Societal,Economic |