Research Computing

Research IT (part of IT Services) provides advanced computing expertise, services and facilities for researchers throughout the University of Manchester, including access to computational resources such as high-performance computing, research software engineering expertise, support with research applications and software, and research data storage.  For a full list of their services, visit their website.

Research IT Training Service

Research IT provide a range of courses for research postgraduates (PGRs) and staff that will improve your skills in all aspects of research computing including programming and high-end computing. These short courses run throughout the year and are delivered either via Teams or in-person on campus. 

Course notes are available online which can be followed independently for many of the courses. In addition to our taught courses, we have some online materials available for Fortran and MATLAB.

There are also user groups for Python, C++ and R as well as research software and green computing.  The groups are open to all University staff and PGRs.   

Occasionally we host training from external providers, such as Wolfram, Nvidia and Mathworks.  To be kept up to date on these training opportunities, please visit our Events page or our Contact Us page to subscribe to our newsletter or to follow us on social media. 

If you need any further information you can contact the Training team through the Connect help portal.  External enquiries can contact us by email.   

Location 

From this year training will be either on campus or via Teams, please take care to check the details on the Training Catalogue. The exact format will vary between courses, and details will be sent to attendees by email before the course. Course notes are available online which can be followed independently for many of the courses.

Current courses

Previous courses

In the past we have run similar courses on:

• MATLAB
• LaTeX
• Introduction to iCSF and CSF

If you would like a course on these or other subjects, please submit a "Bespoke training request" on Connect and one of our training organisers will contact you to discuss your requirements.

Recommended resources

The following online training materials recommended by the training team are available to University of Manchester staff and PGRs.

MATLAB

• Getting started
• Fundamentals
• Matrices
• Graphing
• Programming
• M-files
• MATLAB also offer a wide range of free tutorials and learning material on their website. 

Fortran

• Introduction to Fortran
• Intermediate Fortran

Software development skills

External training and resources we have reviewed and would recommend to researchers.

• Software Carpentry: "The Carpentries teaches foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. We exist because the skills needed to do computational, data-intensive research are often not included as a part of basic research training in many disciplines."
• Self-directed workshops on Parallel Programming by Chris Woods
• CodeRefinery: "We teach all the essential tools which are usually skipped in academic education so everyone can make full use of software, computing, and data with focus on reusability, reproducibility, and openness."