Advanced Research Computing supporting COVID-19 research activities

Advanced Research Computing (ARCCA) is supporting the research community to accurately track the evolution of the COVID-19 outbreaks. ARCCA is working closely with several research teams across the University, providing the technical expertise required to enhance the existing supercomputing services to support COVID-19 research.

The ARCCA team is currently engaged with the only Welsh COVID-19 sequencing centre,part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK). Comprising a team of Cardiff University and Public Health Wales scientists led by Dr Tom Connor (Co-Investigator of the MRC-funded CLIMB project), the sequencing centre is funded by the Welsh Government and Public Health Wales.

This new resource will enable the COG-UK service to accurately track the evolution of the outbreak in Wales and will provide valuable insight and data to inform the public health response both regionally and UK-wide.

Extending CLIMB’s existing use of our datacentre hosting services, ARCCA is leading the deployment by handling the majority of the logistics, professional installation and workplans, to ensure both a secure and robust integration into the existing CLIMB-II infrastructure.

ARCCA staff will be managing this part of the process, starting on-site from 20 April, with the aim of starting the processing of the COVID-19 genomic sequences from Welsh patients in real-time before the end of the month.