New super server at humanities
When you think of humanities, you may not immediately think of a new super server. Yet one has just been commissioned. University lecturer Jelena Prokic from Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities explains more about this development.
‘We’re very proud of our new server,’ Prokic says. ‘Within the humanities there is an increasing amount of research requiring very powerful computers. Several current projects include intensive Natural language processing (NLP) work and deep learning techniques for image processing. We are therefore very pleased that we now have our own server, which will be a part of ALICE HPC dedicated to the research in the humanities.'
Education
The new server will primarily be used in research, but it also offers opportunities for education. ‘It will allow our students to get acquainted with high performance computing and make their first steps with this technology.'
The first students to be introduced to this technology are students from the Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence minor. 'In the future, more and more people will start using this kind of technology, but now even the basics are still a big step for many students. We want to familiarize them with it as much as possible, after which they can hopefully use it in their further education or jobs.’
Community
Prokic hopes the server will eventually strengthen and expand the network of researchers applying quantitative approaches, including AI, within the humanities. 'I hope to create a community of researchers within the humanities using approaches like NLP and deep learning, so that we are no longer just strong on discussing various aspects of AI, but actually applying it to enhance our research.'