​The Scientific Computing Department (SCD), in collaboration with 11 leading UK universities, has been awarded a grant to develop software and hardware capabilities to support the data, modelling, simulation and visualisation needs of the UKCRIC (UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities) complex systems research in infrastructure and cities. The total awarded is £8M over the next 4 years.(£7M for the core facility, named the  Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI), which is based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), and around 12 posts). The grant is funded through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and managed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the government's £138M UKCRIC investment.  The project is led by Prof Jim Hall from Oxford University. The STFC bid team was led by Erica Yang from SCD's Visual Analytics and Imaging Systems (VAIS) group, with support from Peter Oliver, Brian Matthews, Nick Hill, and Andrew Sansum - all from SCD. 

​​The Computational Biology group hosted the annual CCP-EM (Collaborative Computational Project for Electron cryo-Microscopy)  Spring Symposium. The main event took place at RAL on 25^th and 26^th April, following the official opening of the eBIC Electron Microscopy Facility on the 24^th April. The symposium was very successful, attracting 12 UK  and 7 international speakers, 200 attendees to the event itself and a further 275 watching a live stream of the talks. ​

The Computational Chemistry Group, led by Dr Ilian Todorov, carried out a 3-day training workshop on DL_Software at Queen Mary University of London between 3-6 April. The workshop was aimed specifically at academics and researchers interested in modifying the existing DL_Software codes and tailoring them to the needs of their own project work. Part of the training included a Hack day for those seeking advice and help in various aspects of computational work that make use of the DL_Software.. 

The Collaborative Computational Programme CCP5 flagship project, DL_MONTE, led by John Purton at SCD, held its first training workshop at the University of Bath between 19-21 April.

 SCD's Dr Jian Fang is travelling with a Unilever ​delegation to present computational engineering work involving SCD and the Hartree Centre, and will visit their sites in Beijing and Shanghai.

SCD's Iain Duff gave the keynote speech ​at PARNUM 2017, the International Workshop on Parallel Numnerics held in Germany 19-21 April. The aim of the workshop is the exchange of research results in the area of parallel scientific computing, parallel algorithms, and high performance computing. ​Iain's talk was about  “Direct sol​ution of sparse linear equations on parallel computers“​.​

SCD organised and ran a Research Data Alliance Science Workshop, hosted at the Wellcome Trust, London, on 25-26 April.  Some 20 invited experts from across a range of disciplines, from nuclear fusion, materials, chemistry and biology, to archaeology, social science and business studies .   This was part of the Research Data Alliance’s consultation and engagement programme, consulting with the research community on priorities and directions on the issues of sharing and reuse of research data.  The keynote talk was delivered by Robert McGreevy from the  ISIS Neutron and Muon Source. 

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