2017 Centre for eResearch Annual Report
In this report, you will find evidence of the impact of the Centre for eResearch on scholarly activity across the University. It describes how our core services, consultancy and skills development initiatives have helped to increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency of our researchers, and perhaps also in a small way, our research culture. The many positive outcomes over the past year are, I believe, a testament to our hard work and skills, and also to the ability and creativity of our research community. Helping to stimulate and nurture these shared capabilities is hugely satisfying, and I am grateful for such an excellent team to work with and for the trust shown us by the research community. Specific highlights to mention include the successful launch of the Research Hub, the Figshare data publishing service going into production (with 10,000 downloads so far), the creation of a self-service Nectar research cloud, the Jupyter Notebook for supporting research-led teaching and learning, and interactive visualisation of bio-chemical models for advanced tutorials using personal VR headsets.
Of all the highlights achieved this year, the one that encourages me the most is the week-long Winter Boot Camp we offered in July, with over 26 workshops and learning opportunities, from Software Carpentry to how to increase your impact as a researcher. We had over 400 course participants in these workshops from all corners of the University, including senior academic staff as well as research students. Almost everyone in the eResearch team played a role in delivering this event, along with colleagues from the Library and from NeSI. More details can be found at: https://uoa-eresearch.github.io/winterbootcamp2017/
We took time earlier in the year to relocate to our lovely new office space in the New Science Centre (302), rooms 585, 590 and 520 on the 5th floor is where you will find us now. We now also have a dedicated Visualisation Suite (room 580) that is well worth a visit. We are now settled in and have expanded to fill the available space.
During the course of 2018, we will be transitioning from temporary to ongoing funding for the team delivering our core services. That’s 11.5 FTE – a huge commitment from the University for which we are truly grateful. The stability this change will provide for both our staff and for the researchers they support is most welcome.
Professor Mark Gahegan
Director, Centre for eResearch
