The STFC-run programme referred to as the Computational Science Centre for Research Communities (CoSeC) has existed in various forms for decades, its transition to CoSeC started around 5 years ago and has led to significant and positive changes in both the way that the programme delivers its support for Collaborative Computational Projects (CCP) and High-End Consortia (HEC). This is the start of a new series of regular updates outlining exciting new scientific ideas or directions, outputs from CoSeC’s CCP and HEC communities and commentaries on the direction of the programme itself.
The CCP and HEC concept clearly works and produces significant benefit for sciences across UKRI, CoSeC (and the forms its programme has taken before it) has been clearly linked to the success that these communities achieve through external international review, the last of which was in 2018. The fundamental question therefore is how to ensure that CoSeC’s evolution means it continues to offer the vital computational science support and collaboration that its communities rely on and is also a leading force in the new UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure landscape. Why does CoSeC need to do this? The programme is uniquely placed as one that naturally cross-cuts the scientific remits of UKRI to help deliver computational science that is beneficial not only to the communities it directly supports but also to generate a long-sought capability to seed science across the boundaries of discipline. In terms of how we do it, a key aspect is recognising that we have technical skills that cross boundaries between the CCP and HEC communities, so while it makes sense for there to be consistency in contact between communities and CoSeC, if somebody has transferable skills that can enrich other communities, they should be enabled to do so. As the programme already cuts across multiple councils this means it can be a conduit for cross-council dissemination and collaboration, with this scope only widening if the programme's involvement in other councils increases.
A (nearly) full room at the inaugural CoSeC conference held as a breakout session at CIUK 2021 (Manchester) with Prof. David Emerson delivering a talk on exascale activities within the programme.
Another aspect is to introduce activities curated by CoSeC that allow it to help shape the implementation of the UKRI DRI high-level strategy. Recently, it ran the very first CoSeC conference, this event was part of the wider Computing Insight UK conference (see pictures of me getting a bit wet in traditional Manchester weather). While pandemic restrictions did reduce the potential for a large-scale gathering, we had great (safe) attendance on the day and good interaction online, as the event was live-streamed. This is intended as the beginning of a new annual series that will provide a platform for the cross-cutting aspects (both technical and scientific) of the scientific communities that CoSeC supports and collaborates with. We will also look to curate an appropriate focused impact route for UK computational science, such as an open-access journal special issue. In 2019 a new CoSeC impact award for early career researchers was launched, this has proved very popular across a number of scientific disciplines and looks set to continue into the future.
The future for CoSeC and more widely, computational science in the UK, is exciting and I’m very glad to be involved.
