Recipient organisationDurham UniversitySource-published name: Durham University
Funding£246K
PeriodSept 2025 — Mar 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A high-performance computer in northern England is being turned into a testbed where researchers can safely trial artificial intelligence tools alongside their existing simulations. The Bede supercomputer, housed at the N8 Centre for Computationally Intensive Research, already runs AI and simulation workloads on a unique architecture that lets CPUs and GPUs work together on problems too large for a single accelerator card. But many researchers remain hesitant to adopt AI methods, unsure how to trust the outputs or how to integrate them into established scientific workflows. This project addresses that gap by creating a "safe space" where researchers can experiment with AI approaches, supported by dedicated Digital Research Technology Professionals who will help deploy relevant models and data, build custom interfaces, and document what works. The aim is to build confidence and competence in AI for science, not just among computational specialists but also bench scientists who rarely touch high-performance computing directly. If successful, the approach could accelerate scientific discovery across fields from materials science to drug design, and the case studies produced will help other UK research computing centres adopt similar practices. The work is primarily about enabling better fundamental science rather than delivering immediate practical applications.
View original technical description
The N8 centre of Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR) supports research communities across the North of England with the aim of advancing the art of the possible through advanced computational and data-intensive practice. Through the provision of the EPSRC Tier 2 High Performance Computing (HPC) system, Bede, N8 CIR also serves a national mission with a focus on enabling capability accelerated workloads for both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and simulations. Bede’s unique architecture supports coherence between the CPU and GPU, allowing larger problems to be tackled than those which fit within a single accelerator card, through Grace-Hopper and Power9/V100 technologies. Working in conjunction with the N8 CIR, interventions are proposed that aim to catalyse trust and confidence in AI capabilities within the Bede user community by providing a safe-space and expertise to trial AI approaches, enhancing scientific method alongside critical thinking, respectful of the sensitivity of information submitted to AI tools. These include: The identification of and implementation of the hosting of key models and data applicable to the current Bede community to enhance AI for science. Digital Research Technology Professional (dRTP) resource to collaborate with researchers in the application of the deployed models/data to act as exemplars to domains. dRTP resource to design and expose custom interfaces to these models, in conjunction with researchers to improve the accessibility of AI tools on HPC to non-HPC users, such as parts of workflows for bench scientists. To document and share practice including the production of case studies that will be published via the N8 CIR website and presented at National events such as Computing Insight UK (CIUK) and Durham HPC days. The adoption of AI methods has widespread transformative potential for scientific discovery. Through existing mechanisms of the N8 CIR, application of interventions with transferability to other platforms, breadth of beneficiaries (both within and beyond the Bede user community) and of high strategic value to stakeholders will be targeted.
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