Nick Souter

Photo of Cambridge River and view over King's College with a group of people punting.

Photo of the Heart and Lungs Research Institute on Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The building is bronze-colour and in front of a pond.

📣 Interested in the environmental (un)sustainability of AI (and how to support positive change)? Or know someone who is? I have an open position for a postdoctoral researcher to join my group in Cambridge, UK 🌱

🚨Closing June 5th

www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/51255/

Topics below 👇

#AcademicSky #GreenSky

Save the date ! Co-organized with @inserm.bsky.social bLORIER, @nicksouter.bsky.social from @sussexfss.bsky.social will talk about « How to reduce the carbon footprint of your research computing? »
tinyurl.com/4hck9xbh
An event affiliated with @ohbmenvironment.bsky.social !

Som staggering statistics from @ourworldindata.org

Are you a neuroscientist interested in sustainability, but don't know who to follow? 🤔

You're in luck! Here's a starter pack of neuroscientists who post about climate, and researchers who work in the intersection of neuro/psych and climate change!

🌱Msg if you want to be added!

go.bsky.app/E1iW12T

Ten recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of research computing in human neuroimaging Abstract. Given that scientific practices contribute to the climate crisis, scientists should reflect on the planetary impact of their work. Research computing can have a substantial carbon footprint ...

Weekends are a great time to let ideas percolate, so why not give @nicksouter.bsky.social's paper on "10 recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of neuroimaging research" a read and let it sink in while you head outside and get some fresh air?

direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Climate crisis and ecological emergency: Why they concern (neuro)scientists, and what we can do - Charlotte L. Rae, Martin Farley, Kate J. Jeffery, Anne E. Urai, 2022 Our planet is experiencing severe and accelerating climate and ecological breakdown caused by human activity. As professional scientists, we are better placed t...

What is the relationship between neuroscience and climate change? At first these two topics can seem very distinct, but this article by Rae et al. makes a very compelling case for why we should incorporate environmental awareness into our research practices.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Interested in joining us? The Green Algorithms project promotes environmentally sustainable computational science through an online calculator, training material and other tools.

🚨We're recruiting! Interested in making science and computing more environmentally friendly? Now's the time!

Very excited to build a research group at Cambridge Uni to expand our Green Algorithms work thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust
www.green-algorithms.org/join-us
#AcademicSky #SciSky

‼️ NEW PAPER ALERT ‼️

@nicksouter.bsky.social et al. (including many of our SEA-SIG members) demonstrate the environmental impact of different fMRIprep preprocessing choices, and make recommendations for minimizing carbon emissions of your pipeline!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Are you looking to get involved with like-minded neuroimagers to make our field more sustainable?

Nominate yourself to be the new Chair, Secretary, or Treasurer of the SEA-SIG in our 2024 elections! Nominations accepted from August 15-September 15!

ohbm-environment.org/upcoming-sig...

In this short 'PosterByte' video made for the British Neuroscience Association 2024 Members' Meeting, I discuss our recent work on the carbon footprint of neuroscience data processing 🌱🧠🖥️

shorturl.at/aguWY

#BNAMembersMeeting2024

How to talk about climate change and the problem with doomerism Issue 107: We conducted one of the largest experiments ever on climate change behavior — with advice from MythBusters' Jamie Hyneman

The Problem with Doomerism:

Critics are right that doom and gloom can demoralize people into inaction.

We found that negative messages increase social media sharing, but had no effect on policy support or climate beliefs & even backfired for effortful action: powerofus.substack.com/p/how-to-tal...

Big thanks to @loiclnlg.bsky.social, Gabby Samuel, Chris Racey, @lincoln81.bsky.social, Nikhil Bhagwat, Raghav Selvan, and Charlotte Rae for all their work on this paper!

10. Talk about greener computing

Discussing the carbon footprint of data processing within your neuroimaging community will make it easier to think seriously about this issue. This will help in embedding sustainable ideas into standard practice 🌱

9. Use existing data

Running analysis on previously collected and preprocessed data is a great way to test hypotheses without using additional energy to preprocess it yourself. We provide a table describing different open access datasets.

8. Reflect on what needs to be shared

It's good practice to share all raw neuroimaging data on platforms like OpenNeuro. But this storage still has a carbon footprint. Consider whether just sharing preprocessed files would be enough to allow others to make use of your data.

Homepage The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners to develop a World Class Supercomputing Ecosystem in Europe.

7. Push for publicly owned centralised data storage

Large centralised data centres tend to be more efficient, but this often means relying on big tech comapnies to host data. Alternatives like EuropHPC JU may allow storage that is efficient & sustainable:

eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/index_en

Tape Storage Might Be Computing’s Climate Savior Tape media generates just 3 percent of the carbon dioxide that hard disks do

6. Plan your long-term storage

For files you do need to keep, have a data management plan in place. This could include deleting data after a certain time period (e.g., 10 years) or transitioning it to tape storage.

See spectrum.ieee.org/tape-storage...

5. Tidy up "junk" files

Energy is needed to store and backup data. you can reduce your footprint by deleting files you don't need. For #fMRIPrep, junk files make up to 96% of total size.

Our tool fMRIPrepCleanup, automatically finds/removes this data: github.com/NickESouter/...

4b. Time and location matter

You can also consider choosing cloud computing services based in countries/regions with lower average carbon intensity.

2022 data for countries and US states ⬇️

4a. Time and location matter

The carbon intensity of electricity peaks at busy times and drops overnight and at the weekend. By scheduling preprocessing/analysis to run at low intensity times, you can use the same amount of energy while emitting less carbon.

Data for the UK ⬇️

3. Preprocess conservatively

Reduce compute required for your research by only performing preprocessing steps that are necessary. In our recent study, we provide tips on how to minimise emissions from #fMRIPrep while still getting good quality data:

osf.io/preprints/os...

2. Track your emissions

There are tools available to estimate emissions from computing, like the Green Algorithms online calculator: calculator.green-algorithms.org

This can be a good first step in understanding the impact of your computing footprint, and taking action to reduce it!

1. Plan and preregister analysis

Repeating data processing or analysis requires additional energy usage, and therefore carbon emissions. Starting with a plan of exactly what you will do with your data can reduce unforseen obstacles, and therefore unecessary repetitions

Our review paper 'Ten recommendations for reducing the carbon footprint of research computing in human neuroimaging' was recently published in @imagingneurosci.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1162/imag...

Here's a quick summary of each of our recommendations 🧵

Dr Charlotte Rae provides some closing thoughts from the first EIC workshop, considering next steps towards environmentally sustainable research computing.Fi... EIC 2023: Closing remarks

In the afternoon we hosted group discussions focusing on barriers to green computing, and potential solutions. Thank you to everyone who participated in these!

To end the day, Charlotte provided some take-home thoughts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QYp...

Dr Lincoln Colling discusses the benefits of making programming more efficient by critically considering how code is written. Filmed at the 2023 'Environment... EIC 2023: Lincoln Colling - Benefits of efficient programming

Wrapping up our presentations, @lincoln81.bsky.social discussed how we can reduce the carbon footprint of our computing by being more efficient our coding

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hur...

Dr Nick Souter from the University of Sussex presents a case study from MRI, considering how researchers can use evidence-based practice to reduce the carbon... EIC 2023: Nick Souter - Reducing the carbon footprint of digital pipelines: A case study from MRI

I provided a case study of how researchers can measure and reduce the carbon footprint of digital pipelines, using our own work with fMRI preprocessing as an example

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDXL...

Miranda MacFarlane from King's College London provides an overview of the UKRI Net Zero Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Scoping Project, discussing the... EIC 2023: Miranda MacFarlane - UKRI Net Zero Digital Research Infrastructure Scoping Project

Miranda MacFarlane then gave an overview of insights from the UKRI Net Zero Digital Research Infrastructure Scoping Project

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWgz...

Dr Loïc Lannelongue from the University of Cambridge provides an overview of the carbon footprint of computing in science, including methods for quantifying ... EIC 2023: Loïc Lannelongue - Estimating the carbon footprint of computing in science

Turning to the 'Technical Side' of things, @loiclnlg.bsky.social talked about the carbon footprint of high-performance computing in science, and what we can do to measure it

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WVa...

Martin Farley from Green Lab Associates provides an overview of the source of carbon emissions from lab research, as well as the Laboratory Efficiency Assess... EIC 2023 - Martin Farley: Green labs and more

To finish our first session, Martin Farley covered the role of green labs in reducing the carbon footprint of research, as well as reflecting on the emissions resulting from common lab practices

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUAN...