Viking 2 celebration event
Thank you to all those who joined us at last week’s Viking 2 launch event.
Following a welcome from Director of IT Services, Tyrrell Bassoon and Professor Matt Probert from the school of Physics, Engineering and Technology (PET), Dr Emma Barnes, our Head of Research and Faculty IT spoke about the University’s journey with the Viking service.
The Viking service has been used for research at the University for almost five years and now has 1,400 registered users working on 350 separate projects and has contributed to at least £20 million in grant funding! We are hoping with the launch of Viking 2, which includes significant improvements on its hardware, we will continue with this success going forwards. York is also at the top of a carbon leadership board which tracks the carbon output of universities data centres.
"It can be scary to do something different but it’s worthwhile. I’ve had lots of other universities get in contact to find out about our move to Sweden."
Dr Emma Barnes, Head of Research and Faculty IT at the University of York
We also heard from John Wernvik from EcoDataCenter who explained how the data centres work as well as how Sweden’s cold climate allows them to be as sustainable as possible. EcoDataCenter provides us with a monthly report where we can measure the CO2 emissions and water used by our cluster.
We then listened to six lightning talks covering how Viking is used by researchers across the University. From investigating how London English has changed over the generations, revealing the history of winemaking in Italy and even helping to discover a new protein, these talks were a fantastic way to understand the important role Viking 2 is playing across the University.
What next?
We’re always looking to improve the experience using Viking for our staff and now Viking 2 has been live for six months, we’re looking at how we can make it easier for those without a technical background to use.
We also want to bring the sustainability reporting provided by EcoDataCenter to our users so researchers can see the environmental impact of their research and consider steps they can take to reduce this impact going forwards.