Courses on IT topics are offered in the HRZ's own course room every semester.
The lecturers of the HRZ are looking forward to your registrations for the following IT classes via eCampus in the winter term 2024/25:
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Working with TEI: Gottfried Kinkel and the revolution of 1848 in letters
Tuesdays: 08.10. - 21.01.2025, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., registration via eCampus starting September 1, 2024
- MS Excel I - Basics
20.11.2024 - 22.11.2024, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., registration via eCampus starting October 15, 2024
06.01.2025 - 08.01.2025, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., registration via eCampus starting December 1, 2024
- MS Excel II - Intermediate
27.01.2025 - 29.01.2025, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., registration via eCampus starting December 1, 2024
- Image editing with GIMP
Wednesdays: 13.11.2024, 20.11.2024 and 04.12.2024 (3 dates), each from 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m., registration via eCampus starting October 15, 2024
- HPC courses
Registration now open for HPC courses in winter term 2024/25: The HPC team at the University IT and Data Center is offering a series of exciting introductory courses and workshops (in English) on high-performance computing.
The programme for the HPC courses in the winter term 2024/25 is as follows:
- Introduction to Programming with Python
Oct. 21-22, 2024 or Jan. 20-21, 2025 - 3:00 - 6:30 pm on each day
- Linux Introduction Course
Nov. 25-26, 2024 or Feb. 10-11, 2025 3:00 - 6.30 pm on each day
- Introduction to Working on HPC Clusters
Oct. 23.-24, 2024 or Jan. 22-23, 2025 - 3:00 - 6:30 pm on each day
- Version Control with Git
Nov. 27-28, 2024 or Feb. 12-13.02.2025, 3:00 - 6:30 pm on each day
- Advanced Python for Scientists
Jan. 13-14, 2025, 3:00 - 6:30 pm on each day
- Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster
Feb. 05, 2025, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
All courses take place at HRZ, Wegelerstr. 6, room 0.012. (route description). Registration takes place via eCampus.
Please note while registering: In ALL courses, you MUST join one of the groups to attend, just joining the event is not enough. That is because most courses are held multiple times, or additional dates may be added depending on the demand.
The University IT and Data Center announces an important innovation: The current ticket system KIX will be replaced by the new product Znuny. This will be done step by step and should be completed by the end of the year.
The software previously used (KIX17) will not be further developed and will no longer receive support in the near future. The new ticket system (Znuny) contains many features of the current ticket system and supplements these with new options and improvements.
In order to ensure a smooth transition for employees of the University of Bonn who work with the ticket system, the ticket system team will draw up targeted migration plans and organise training courses.
If you are not yet working with the ticket system and would like to find out more about its advantages and possibilities, you can find further information in the section Ticket-System in the HRZ-Doku in Confluence (only accessible in Bonnet/VPN).
The Council of Europe invites to the second conference ‘Regulating the Use of AI Systems in Education’ on 24 and 25 October 2024 in Strasbourg. With this interactive event, the Council of Europe, with the participation of the University IT and Data Center of the University of Bonn, wants to discuss the necessary AI regulation in education.
The conference is being organised by members of the AI&ED Expert Group, including Dr Christian M. Stracke from the University IT and Data Center. The AI&ED Expert Group was appointed by the Council of Europe to assist in the development of a specific European law for the ethical use of AI in education. The planned EU regulation on AI in education was mandated by education ministers in 2023 and will be presented and discussed at the upcoming conference.
The EU Commission, EU Parliament and governments have now agreed on the adoption of the AI Act as the first international cross-sectoral AI regulatory law and published it. However, the education sector is left out and the Council of Europe wants to close this gap, for which it received a mandate from all European education ministries in September 2023. The AI&ED Expert Group is currently working on the draft AI law and recommendations for AI curricula. The first interim results were presented at the AIED Conference 2024 in Recife (see HRZ News from August 7, 2024) as part of a workshop and discussed with participants from universities worldwide. The aim is to adopt and publish this as EU law as soon as possible in order to enable the ethical and safe use of AI in universities.
Registration still possible until 1st September 2024
We are pleased to be able to support this development on the part of the University IT and Data Center and would like to draw the attention of all interested parties to the agenda of the Council of Europe conference on 24 and 25 October 2024 in Strasbourg. Online registration (see agenda link) is still possible until 1st September 2024.
After months of renovation work, the second floor of the University IT and Data Center at the University of Bonn has finally been reopened. The reopening marks an important milestone for the HRZ, which had been struggling with the consequences of the incident since the fire.
In October 2023, a fire on the second floor of the University IT and Data at Wegelerstraße 6 caused considerable damage. The fire, which started during ongoing renovation work, mainly destroyed the corridor and the immediately adjacent office. Fortunately, no people were injured. However, due to the heavy smoke development and spread, the entire office space on the second floor was no longer usable after the fire. This had a significant impact on internal operations, particularly with regard to the distribution of workstations in the HRZ. The loss of the second floor meant the loss of a third of the existing offices and workstations at the HRZ, which required a rapid and comprehensive response.
In February 2024, the University of Bonn was able to provide the HRZ with premises at Poppelsdorfer Allee 24, which relieved the precarious situation.
Now, after around ten months, the second floor of the HRZ is fully functional again. The rooms were ready for occupation at the beginning of August 2024 and are now available again to HRZ employees as desk-sharing workstations.
In the course of increasing digitalisation and research at the University of Bonn Bonn, high-performance computing plays a central role. In order to give university members a deeper insight into the HPC universe at the University of Bonn, the University IT and Data Center offered a presentation of the HPC clusters, including a guided tour of the server room of the latest supercomputer ‘Marvin’, as part of the HRZ Café. Participants took advantage of this exclusive opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of modern high-performance computing at the University of Bonn.
What is HPC and why is it important?
High-Performance Computing (HPC) refers to the use of supercomputers and parallel processing techniques to perform complex calculations in the shortest possible time. In research, HPC enables, for example, the simulation of physical models, the analysis of large amounts of data or the processing of algorithms in the field of machine learning. For the University of Bonn, high-performance computing is an indispensable tool that supports research and innovation at the highest level.
HPC cluster Marvin remains among the TOP500 worldwide
The Marvin supercomputer has been at the heart of high-performance computing at the University of Bonn since autumn 2023. With its impressive computing power, Marvin is still one of the most powerful computers in the world almost a year after its installation (482nd place in the TOP500 list, as of June 2024). The computing capacity of the HPC cluster is required for numerous scientific projects at the University of Bonn. With its 277 computing nodes, the supercomputer is able to carry out countless parallel calculations simultaneously and thus offers researchers at the University of Bonn a powerful platform to realise their data analyses and simulations efficiently and effectively.
Guided tour of the Marvin supercomputer server room
The tour of the server room of the Marvin HPC cluster was conducted by Jan Steiner, a member of the HPC team at the University IT and Data Center. The tour began with a brief introduction to the services offered by the HRZ on the subject of HPC and scientific computing at the University of Bonn. Jan Steiner then took the participants to the server room at the Institute for Numerical Simulation, where Marvin is housed. Here, the architecture of the supercomputer was explained to the participants, mainly employees from the institute's administration, and how the cooling and energy supply of such a system is ensured. The participants were able to gain an insight into the challenges that can arise during the maintenance and operation of such a mainframe computer.
An exciting insight into the topic of HPC and behind the scenes of operations at the University IT and Data Center.
The Artificial Intelligence and Education (AIED) conference celebrated its 30th anniversary with a record number of participants. Over 500 researchers from all over the world came together from July, 8 to July, 12 in Recife, Brazil, to discuss the most pressing issues and most significant research findings in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and education.
Dr Christian M. Stracke, scientific employee at the University of Bonn's University IT and Data Center, attended the conference as a member of the AIED Expert Group of the Council of Europe and presented the first systematic literature analysis on the ethical issues surrounding AI and education to the international colleagues on site in a scientific lecture.
On this occasion, the teaching-learning project "Virtual Collaboration" (ViCo for short) of the University of Bonn and the first handout for teachers in universities, which was created by the European network "Ethical Use of AI", were presented.
In addition, Dr Christian M. Stracke addressed the topic of AI regulation and current developments in a half-day interactive workshop, for which he also welcomed Ahmet-Murat Kilic from the Council of Europe and organised a World Café in small groups on regulatory issues.
There was great interest in the research results and the AIED 2024 conference generally enjoyed active participation. One of the major Brazilian TV stations (Globo) reported on site. The TV report on the conference and the short interview with Dr Christian M. Stracke (in Portuguese) can be found in the video (from minute 34:16) on the following website: https://g1.globo.com/pe/pernambuco/bom-dia-pe/video/edicao-de-11072024-12748487.ghtml
As a part of the open consultation, the Confluence training programme is expanded. Starting September, the first hour of the open Zoom consultation will be dedicated to present a specific topic or selected macros. They will be exemplified and tried out together immediately afterwards.
Below you can find an overview over the first topics and dates (every Tuesday at 10:00 am):
- 03.09.2024: Page structuring - improving page structures using layout areas and macros
- 01.10.2024: Connecting pages and contents - using links and macros to make pages and contents "alive"
- 05.11.2024: Designing contents - designing and formating contents using macros
- 03.12.2024: macros "to do list" and "task resport" - allocating tasks, attaching a deadline and keeping track
- 07.01.2025: macro "page details and page report" - create overviews for the data of different pages on a single overview page; e.g. for project overviews, reports, status reports, project portfolio management
A registration is not needed. You can get access to the "Confluence-Flashlight" via the usual link to the open consultation.
You can get access to the Zoom meeting room for the “Confluence Flashlight” training format via the regular link to the open consultation in Confluence (only accessible in BONNET/VPN).