Developing a Sustainable Research Computing Environment at UK Universities

🕒 Friday 24 July 2026, 10:30–16:00
📍 170 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London (this is an in-person event)
📝 Please register here to receive joining information and for catering purposes
📋 Event schedule

Join us to to hear from speakers working on green and sustainable research computing at institutions across the UK and celebrate the launch of our new Digital Research Sustainability short course:

With the march towards ever more computational research across almost all domains, green and sustainable approaches to research computing are now a key item on the agenda of many university sustainability teams. As researchers rapidly adopt the use of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), alongside so many other industries, the volume, cost and environmental impact of the computing we use is both a common talking point and a challenge for employers and individuals alike.

This event, jointly hosted by the Sustainable Institutional Research Computing Culture project at Imperial College London (supported via Research England Research Culture funding) and the EPSRC-funded STEP-UP project, will mark the launch of our new Digital Research Sustainability short course and provide a chance to bring together researchers, sustainability policy and strategy experts and other members of research community interested in this area.

The event will include talks from members of the Imperial team working on developing the Digital Research Sustainability course and undertaking work on developing a sustainable institutional research computing culture. We’ll also be hearing from experts from across the UK research community who are working to support the development of green and sustainable research computing practices and structures.

This is an in-person only event that will be held at Imperial College London’s South Kensington Campus from 10:30-16:00 on Friday 24th July.

Schedule

Time  
10.00 - 10:30 Arrival and registration
10.30 - 10:45

Welcome and Introduction - Developing a sustainable research computing culture
Jeremy Cohen, Imperial College London, slides
10.45 - 11:05

Sustainable Imperial - Imperial’s sustainability strategy
Anna Korre, Associate Provost (Sustainability), Imperial College London, slides
11:05 - 11:25

Green Algorithms, Green DiSC and GREENER principles: making scientific computing more environmentally sustainable
Loïc Lannelongue, PI, Cambridge Sustainable Computing Lab and Green DiSC lead, slides
11:25 - 11:35

Modelling the Power Consumption of Scientific Computing
Jack Coker, Cambridge Sustainable Computing Lab, slides
11:35 - 11.50 Break
11:50 - 12:10

Sustainable computing in the research lifecycle
Liz Ing-Simmons, King’s College London, slides
12:10 - 12:30

The Network for sustainable Digital Research Infrastructure Vision and Expertise (NetDRIVE)
Sarah Sparrow & Amani Maalouf, University of Oxford / NetDRIVE, slides
12:30 - 12:50

"Glocal" research computing sustainability: findings from the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid and the University of Manchester
Caterina Doglioni, University of Manchester, slides via Zenodo
12:50 - 13:00

Sustainability in Imperial’s Research Computing Service
Emily Lumley, Research Computing Service, Imperial College London, slides
13:00 - 14.00 Lunch
14:00 - 14:30

Digital Research Sustainability training: Launching our green and sustainable computing short course
Christopher Cave-Ayland and Miruna Serian, Research Computing Service, Imperial College London
14:30 - 14:40

7 Steps to ICT Sustainability
Hannah Scott, Head of Sustainability - ICT / Property, Imperial College London, slides
14:40 - 14:50

Student presentation: Estimating the Carbon Emissions of ChatGPT Usage through Imperial’s ‘dAIsy’ AI Platform
Amber Garg, MSc Climate Change, Management and Finance, Imperial Business School
14:50 - 15.00 Break
15:00 - 15:50 Panel discussion
   - Michael Bearpark (Chair)
   - Caterina Doglioni
   - Liz Ing-Simmons
   - Loïc Lannelongue
15:50 - 16:00 Wrap up and closing comments
16:00 - 17:00 Networking and refreshments