Behavioural Research Lab Seminar: Doctor Nick Souter

This Behavioural Research Lab seminar will be hosted by Doctor Nick Souter, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, who leads the group exploring the carbon footprint of neuroimaging. An online option is also available, if you would like to join online please contact [email protected].

The storage and processing of data uses energy, and therefore has a carbon footprint. This footprint is likely to increase in coming years given increased adoption of machine learning techniques for analysis. In this session, I'll discuss how computing leads to carbon emissions, and what can be done to reduce your personal research computing footprint. Specifically, I’ll provide context on:

• The scale of impact of the ICT sector on the climate
• The impact of accumulating unused ‘dark data’
• The importance of carbon intensity and task scheduling
• How to cut back on unnecessary computing
• Current methods for tracking computing energy usage and carbon emissions

This will include specific examples from neuroimaging research, but the messages and approaches discussed here will apply to any discipline requiring the processing of large amounts of data. The session will end with live demonstrations of green computing tools, including an online carbon-tracking calculator, and a climate-aware task scheduler.

Host or Publisher Behavioural Research Laboratory