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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on June 17, 2026

Tags: newsletters 

SEAVEA toolkit: An introduction to verification, validation and uncertainty quantification for computational applications

Free webinar, Wednesday 24th June 2026 14:00 - 16:00 - note earlier than usual start time

The webinar introduces the SEAVEA toolkit and its practical approach to improving the credibility and reliability of computational models through Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification (VVUQ). It provides an applied and accessible introduction to core VVUQ techniques, explaining why they are essential for building trustworthy simulation-based models and how they can be systematically incorporated into computational workflows. Participants will gain an understanding of how VVUQ helps quantify uncertainty, assess model accuracy, and improve confidence in simulation results.

The session demonstrates how the SEAVEA toolkit supports these processes in practice, offering tools and methods for structuring VVUQ workflows across a range of computational applications. Through guided examples, participants will see how models can be tested, validated against data, and analysed for uncertainty in a consistent and reproducible way. A live, hands-on demonstration will illustrate how the toolkit can be applied to real modelling scenarios, showing practical steps from setup through to analysis and interpretation of results. This makes the webinar particularly relevant for those working in scientific computing, applied mathematics, engineering, and data-driven simulation.

By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of how to apply VVUQ principles in their own work and how the SEAVEA toolkit can help improve the robustness and transparency of computational modelling studies.

Full details and join link

Containers for Reproducible Research: Introduction to Podman and Singularity

Online, 22 and 24 June 2026 10:00 - 16:00

This course introduces the use of containers as a means of creating reproducible computational environments. Such environments are essential for ensuring reproducible research outputs and simplifying the deployment of complex software stacks across different systems.

The course focuses on Podman for local container workflows and introduces Singularity/Apptainer for use in high-performance computing (HPC) environments. While specific tools are used for illustration, the concepts and practices covered are broadly applicable across container technologies.

Full details and registration

Data Carpentry

Online, 21st - 24th July 2026 13:00 - 16:30 BST

Data Carpentry develops and teaches workshops on the fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its target audience is researchers who have little to no prior computational experience, and its lessons are domain specific, building on learners’ existing knowledge to enable them to quickly apply skills learned to their own research. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

This workshop uses a tabular ecology dataset from the Portal Project Teaching Database and teaches data cleaning, management, analysis, and visualization. There are no pre-requisites, and the materials assume no prior knowledge about the tools. We use a single dataset throughout the workshop to model the data management and analysis workflow that a researcher would use.

The workshop will cover:

  • Data Organization in Spreadsheets Learn how to organize tabular data, handle date formatting, carry out quality control and quality assurance and export data to use with downstream applications.
  • Data Cleaning with OpenRefine Explore, summarize, and clean tabular data reproducibly.
  • Data Analysis and Visualization in R Import data into R, calculate summary statistics, and create publication-quality graphics.
  • Data Management with SQL Structure data for database import. Query data within a relational database.

Please note that the first two lessons are more introductory and are covered on the first day of the workshop. The third lesson is delivered over two days, while the last one is taught on the last day of the workshop.

Full details and registration:

Intermediate Modern Fortran

Online, 27, 29 and 31 July 2026 10:00 - 16:00

Fortran (a contraction of Formula Translation) was the first programming language to have a standard (in 1954), but has changed significantly over the years. More recent standards (the latest being Fortran 2018) come under the umbrella term “Modern Fortran”. Fortran retains very great significance in many areas of scientific and numerical computing, particularly for applications such as quantum chemistry, plasmas, engineering and fluid dynamics, and in numerical weather prediction and climate models.

This intermediate course concentrates on some of the more recent features which are central to Modern Fortran. Attendees should be familiar with the basics of Fortran programming.

There are two main topics in this intermediate course: the facilities in Fortran for abstraction and polymorphism provided by classes and interfaces, and the facilities for formal interoperability with ANSI C. The course will cover type extension (“classes” and “inheritance”), type-bound procedures (“methods”), generic procedures (“polymorphism”), and so on. The standard iso_c_binding module provides facilities for interoperability with C; this allow the communication of Fortran entities with direct analogues C, and also Fortran objects (particularly arrays) which have no direct analogue in C.

Further language features concerning arrays, pointers, and facilities for structured programming using submodules will also be covered along the way.

Knowledge of the object-oriented paradigm would be useful, but is not essential. Knowledge of C is required for the material on C/Fortran interoperation. The course will allow programmers interested in working on larger, structured, software projects to make use of (almost) a full complement of Modern Fortran features.

Full details and registration

ARCHER2 User Survey 2026

We are committed to continually improving the ARCHER2 Service and would like to request your input to help us understand what is important to you, where the Service is working well and where there is scope for improvement.

The ARCHER2 User Survey consists of just a few questions and should take only a few minutes of your time to complete. There are opportunities to add more detailed comments if you wish.

For each survey response received, we will donate £1 to Save The Children. Additionally, if you enter your ARCHER2 username in the final question, then you will be entered into the prize draw to win one of five £50 Amazon vouchers.

Complete the survey

Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. The responses will be used to try and improve the service for you and to help identify key areas for service development, and will be shared with UKRI for consideration in planning future services.

Recently added known issues

The “Known Issues” page of the ARCHER2 Documentation https://docs.archer2.ac.uk/known-issues/ lists all current open known issues including a description of the issue, its symptoms and any work-arounds.

No recent issues

Upcoming ARCHER2 Training

Further details of upcoming training

We always welcome researchers wishing to present their work in a webinar - please contact the Service Desk if you would be interested in presenting your work.

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Recordings of past courses

Recordings of past virtual tutorials