Thursday 11 June 2026 9:30am
Research Informatics Training Room, Craik-Marshall Building
About
Dates: Thu 11, Fri 12 June 2026
Time: 09:30 - 17:30 (Thu) or 13:00 (Fri)
Location: Research Informatics Training Room, Craik-Marshall Building
♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
Participants can make use of the computers in the training room, unless otherwise advised. Instructions on specific system requirements and downloads will be provided when a booking is secured.
Please ensure you meet the target audience criteria and prerequisites before registering for a course.
Event Overview
Knowing how to use High Performance Computing (HPC) systems is crucial for fields such as bioinformatics, big data analysis, image processing, machine learning, parallel task execution, and other high-throughput applications.
In this introductory course, you will learn the fundamentals of HPC, including what it is and how to effectively utilise it. We will cover best practices for working with HPC systems, explain the roles of "login" and "compute" nodes, outline the typical filesystem organization on HPC clusters, and cover job scheduling with the widely-used SLURM scheduler.
This hands-on workshop is designed to be accessible to researchers from various backgrounds, providing numerous opportunities to practice and apply the skills you acquire.
As an optional session for those interested, we will also introduce the (free) HPC facilities available at Cambridge University (the course is not otherwise Cambridge-specific).
How to book Target audience- This course is aimed at students and researchers of any background.
- We assume no prior knowledge of what a HPC is or how to use it.
- It may be particularly useful for those who have attended other Research Informatics Training courses and now need to process their data on a Linux server. It will also benefit those who find themselves using their personal computers to run computationally demanding analysis/simulations and would like to learn how to adapt these to run on a HPC.
- A working knowledge of the UNIX command line is absolutely essential.
- If you are not able to attend our prerequisite course, please work through our Unix command line materials ahead of the course (up to section 8).
Fees must be paid at registration.
Free for registered University of Cambridge students
£ 65/full day for all University of Cambridge staff, including postdocs.
£ 65/full day for all academic participants from external Institutions and charitable organizations.
£ 130/full day for all Industry participants.
For further information about the courses, please email the Research Informatics Training Team.