UKSPA Breakthrough Issue 3 SPA03.ebook_hr | Page 42

Innovation Spencer Lamb Director of Research Verne Global Spencer leads the vertical strategy across marketing, business development, sales and operations within the Education, Research and Science sectors Jon Tucker executive director Jisc Jon is executive director, membership engagement and sales, and has 23 years' experience in IT, leading growth and customer satisfaction 4 2 | U K S PA b r e ak t h r o u g h | w i n t e r 2 0 17 The power to discover Leveraging renewable energy to reduce the carbon footprint of research T he power to crack the codes that hide breakthroughs in research is within our grasp. The ability is made possible by computing and the benefits that high performance computing (HPC) brings in helping scientists and researchers find those elusive needles in the haystack that unlock cures, understand genome sequences, and analyse data in a way that was previously not possible. As the third largest commercial vertical market segment for HPC, bio and life sciences companies in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, medical research, and environmental engineering can do more, and do it faster. This is true in academic and government research labs, which are increasingly leveraging HPC as part of their standard practices. The forthcoming challenge is that HPC clusters consume a great deal of energy – energy to power the servers used to find that needle, and to keep them cool so they can operate efficiently and continuously. Today’s research climate is