Researchers and software engineers from our Computer Science Department and Advanced Research Computing (ARC) have created a new online course to help postgraduate students and research professionals develop their programming skills.
Led by Dr Chris Marcotte and Professor Tobias Weinzierl, the introductory C++ course is now available through the DiRAC Training Academy. It combines short lecture videos by multiple guest speakers with self-learning materials, including interactive programming notebooks.
The material is aimed at PhD students, research software engineers and MSc students as part of continuous professional development (CPD). It provides the foundations needed to begin programming in C++, a language widely used for high-performance computing.
Supporting high-performance computing education
The new course has been developed in response to a growing gap in university teaching.
C++ is disappearing from the curriculum in many areas of computing, despite remaining an important language for high-performance computing.
The course will help learners develop the knowledge needed to understand key approaches used in high-performance computing.
The work was funded through the DRI projects HAI-End and SHAREing as well as DiRAC, and carried out predominantly by Ananya Gangopadhyay at ARC, Fernandez Amez at Institute for Data Science (IDAS), and Adam Tuft from Computer Science Department,
It forms part of efforts to strengthen Durham's high-performance computing education, and it is available through the UK-wide DiRAC Training Academy, which provides free courses for researchers.
Building skills for future research
The course is intended to support researchers across the UK by making advanced computing training practical and accessible.
The DiRAC Training Academy aims to give the scientific community the skills needed to use high-performance computing in research, with courses covering areas including foundational skills, development and artificial intelligence.
The C++ course also contributes to the wider aims of SHAREing, a UK-wide initiative focused on helping research institutions make effective use of increasingly powerful computing technologies.
The new C++ course provides a foundation for future high-performance computing training at Durham, with the longer-term ambition of developing further and more advanced learning opportunities.
