Meet the ARCHER2 team – UKRI
By Rebecca How EPSRC on June 1, 2021
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ARCHER2 is funded by UKRI through two partner councils, EPSRC and NERC, who started building the case for the system back in 2016. Rebecca How from EPSRC’s Research Infrastructure team joined the ARCHER2 project in January 2019, taking over the Project Manager role for the upcoming service, while also acting as Contract Manager for the previous ARCHER service until it was decommissioned.
Rebecca gives us an insight into her role:
My role as Project Manager is to work with colleagues across UKRI, our contractors who provide the ARCHER2 service, and engage with the users. My role is very interesting and varied, having been involved in the business case, procurements and overseeing the delivery and installation of the service.
I’ve done a lot of work on EPSRC’s access mechanisms for ARCHER2, to ensure that we have a wide range of routes to suit various user requirements. In addition to this I’ve also been involved in setting up the ARCHER2 Management Board and looking to establish the ARCHER2 User Advisory Group.
My priority has been making sure that when we deliver the full ARCHER2 system it lives up to expectations and allows users to continue to produce great quality science. I try to keep stakeholders up to date with ARCHER2 progress so that they can plan their work appropriately and I write the weekly updates that get sent to users from the ARCHER2 Helpdesk.
A big focus of mine lately has been on establishing what data and information we can collect on the service, so users might notice that we ask for more details when setting up projects. It is my aim that we can use this information to demonstrate the fantastic work that our researchers produce on ARCHER2 and help make the case for future HPC investments.
Although I am based in UKRI’s office in Swindon, I am Scottish and grew up a couple of miles from where ARCHER2 is based! I studied chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a PhD and postdoc at the University of St Andrews. It’s been really nice to have a link back home to Scotland working with the ARCHER2 team in Edinburgh.
