Category: UCloud

Categories
Application Supercomputing UCloud

New app: ONLYOFFICE Now Available on UCloud

ONLYOFFICE is a browser-based office suite for creating and editing text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Fully compatible with Microsoft Office formats, the interface supports a seamless user experience for those familiar with traditional desktop editors.

Designed to support document work directly within the UCloud environment, ONLYOFFICE allows users to:

  • Edit and create documents stored on UCloud
  • Work with word documents, presentations, and spreadsheets
  • Upload and download files without leaving the platform
  • Maintain full compatibility with Microsoft Office file types

The app provides core functionality through a lightweight, browser-accessible interface. No additional software installation is required.

ONLYOFFICE is available to all UCloud users and is particularly relevant for:

  • Editing or preparing academic documents
  • Managing structured data in spreadsheets
  • Creating or reviewing presentations
  • Performing collaborative writing tasks

For more details, visit the UCloud documentation.

App Suggestions and Support

To suggest additional applications or request new features, contact your local Front Office.

Categories
Teaching Tutorial UCloud Webinars & Tutorials - video Workshop

Workshop recording: Introduction to hosting courses on UCloud

In this video we will introduce the new UCloud Courses app – a tool for hosting and managing university courses on UCloud.

Dr. Federica Lo Verso will walk you through the concept and background of the app.
You’ll get a hands-on demonstration of how to access and use the tool, explore its integration with GitHub, and hear directly from Dr. Himanshu Khandelia, who shares his experience using UCloud Courses in real teaching scenarios.

We’ll also guide you through the application process, show you the technical and financial requirements, and give you a preview of an upcoming hands-on course.

00:00 – Introduction by Dr. Federica Lo Verso
01:23 – Background: Launch of the new UCloud Courses app
04:12 – Walkthrough: Where to find the Courses app and how to use it
07:00 – Recap of the UCloud Courses app demonstration
07:56 – Walkthrough: How the GitHub repository works
10:07 – Advantages of using UCloud Courses
11:12 – Use case introduction: Dr. Himanshu Khandelia
11:58 – Testimonial: Dr. Khandelia shares his experience using UCloud Courses
14:00 – Live demo: Dr. Khandelia shows his use of Courses and GitHub integration
23:00 – Application procedure
24:21 – Necessary resources: Compute and storage
25:28 – Re-use and update existing UCloud Courses
26:20 – Financial model for support
27:12 – Outro and teaser for the upcoming hands-on course

Categories
Application Supercomputing UCloud

New app: Manage your next event with Indico

Indico is a robust open-source platform for event organization, archiving, and collaboration, ideal for managing conferences, workshops, and scientific meetings.

Key features include:

  • Event Management: Indico allows you to organize a wide range of events, from small seminars to large conferences. It supports the entire event lifecycle, including registration, abstract and final paper submission.
  • Hierarchical Protection: Indico uses a hierarchical protection scheme that allows for different roles and protection levels within events. 
  • Integration with Collaborative Tools: Indico integrates seamlessly with tools like Zoom, enhancing the productivity of web-driven meetings. 
  • Document Management: Indico facilitates easy upload and retrieval of presentations, papers, and other documents.

Indico has been implemented on UCloud and is ready for use by all UCloud users.

For more details, visit UCloud docs for full documentation.

Categories
Supercomputing Teaching Tutorial UCloud Workshop

Workshop 11/6: UCloud Courses

Developing your own UCloud course app using a newly developed template-based approach

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through all the steps of developing a UCloud course app using our newly developed template-based approach. The concept involves having a dedicated app on UCloud for your university course that students can use in e.g., exercise/lab session and/or at home. An introduction to the approach can be found in this webinar recording.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

  • Translate your course structure to a structure that is compatible with a UCloud course app.
  • Set up the course development environment which involves cloning the GitHub repository and running a course setup script.
  • Customize the provided templates to build a UCloud course app that includes all required components – software dependencies, scripts, datasets, and more.
  • Test the course on your computer during development to ensure everything functions correctly. We will also see how the final course app looks once it has been put on UCloud.

Git/GitHub and Docker are essential tools in the UCloud course development process. In the workshop, we will give short introductions to both tools primarily aimed at those participants who do not have experience with them. Participants can benefit from following introductory tutorials to Git and Docker in advance, although this is not a requirement.

Date: 11 June 2025

Time: 12:30-14:30 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Target audience: Researchers and teachers across all departments at all the Danish universities

Technical Level: Basic to Advanced

Sign up for this workshop.

Categories
Application Supercomputing UCloud

New app: Speech Analyzer – A New AI Tool for Dialogue Analysis

With growing demand for transcription/AI services on Interactive HPC – UCloud, Speech Analyzer has been added to the platform.  

Speech Analyzer is a specialised application built on top of Label Studio, optimised for dialogue analysis. It enables users to label, edit, and annotate speech transcriptions generated by the integrated Transcriber engine. It also allows you to share tasks with collaborators. 

Sign up for the free online workshop on transcribing and editing audio transcriptions with the Transcriber and Speech Analyzer apps takes place 22 May.

For more details on the Speech Analyzer application, visit UCloud docs for the full documentation.

Categories
Interactive HPC Supercomputing UCloud Workshop

Workshops on AI applications

Join us for three new and free online workshops to explore how these tools can transform your work. Discover AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Workshop 1:

Transcribing and editing audio transcriptions with Transcriber and Speech Analyzer apps

Date: 22 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through the complete pipeline of transcribing audio files from speech to text and editing and classifying transcription segments.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Use Transcriber for transcribing audio/video files. Transcriber is based on Open AI’s Whisper language model. The app can transcribe speech audio to text in various formats and uses the WhisperX package to perform speaker recognition.
  • Navigate the new, simple, drag and drop Transcriber user interface to make it easier for you to use AI to transcribe audio files.
  • Edit and classify the transcriptions with Speech Analyzer. Speech Analyzer is an application built on top of Label Studio, specifically optimized for dialogue analysis. It enables you to label, edit, and annotate transcriptions generated using Transcriber.
  • Perform a comprehensive dialogue analysis on UCloud involving transcribing audio files using Transcriber, followed by transcription analysis with Speech Analyzer.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Researchers across all Departments, particularly Digital Humanities and Social Science, Students, AI interested.

Technical Level: Basic to Intermediate.

Sign up for this workshop

Workshop 2:

ChatUI and CVAT pipelines

Date: 27 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through two different AI based workflows, involving ChatUI and CVAT apps.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Use Chat UI as a flexible interface for hosting of various LLM models, and interact via a chat or API environment.
  • Use ChatUI for semantic search in a knowledge base.
  • Use CVAT as a powerful annotation tool, including image classification, object detection, semantic and instance segmentation, and video / 3D annotations.
  • Use advanced CVAT features including auto-annotation, algorithmic assistance, management and analytics.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Researchers across all fields, particularly transport, robotics, digital humanities, social sciences, machine learning and students.

Technical Level: Basic to Intermediate.

Sign up for this workshop

Workshop 3:

Fine-Tuning and Deploying  Large Language Models with NeMo Framework and Triton Inference Server

Date: 28 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through the complete pipeline of fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for specialized tasks such as medical question-answering!

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Prepare and preprocess open-source datasets for fine-tuning.
  • Apply Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) using LoRA with NVIDIA NeMo Framework.
  • Deploy optimized LLMs using NVIDIA Triton Inference Server and TensorRT-LLM.
  • Generate a synthetic Q&A dataset using Label Studio connected to a live inference backend.
  • Fine-tune and evaluate your customized LLM for domain-specific applications.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Machine learning practitioners, researchers, and engineers interested in LLM customization, domain adaptation, or scalable model deployment.

Technical Level: Intermediate to Advanced.

Sign up for this workshop

DeiC Interactive HPC provides researchers at Danish universities with access to a variety of AI applications on UCloud that enable them to accelerate their research through powerful and secure computational tools.

Through online workshops the DeiC Interactive HPC Consortium will introduce both new and experienced users to DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI app portfolio.

The sessions are designed to equip researchers and students with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively harness DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI tools for their research.

Feel free to share with colleagues and peers who might benefit. See you there!

Categories
Interactive HPC Supercomputing UCloud

DeiC Interactive HPC now has 15,000 Users

The DeiC Interactive HPC consortium is thrilled to announce that the service, powered by the UCloud software, has reached another significant milestone: 15,000 users. This achievement underscores the service’s growing popularity and its pivotal role in advancing digital research through user-friendly supercomputing access.

Since its inception, DeiC Interactive HPC has been dedicated to providing researchers with seamless access to high-performance computing (HPC) resources. The service’s intuitive interface and capabilities have revolutionized the way researchers approach complex computational tasks, making HPC accessible to a broader audience.

DeiC Interactive HPC’s success is a testament to the collaborative efforts of the consortium that operates the service. Together, we have created an environment where researchers from diverse fields can leverage cutting-edge technology to drive innovation and discovery.

As DeiC Interactive HPC and UCloud continues to grow, we remain committed to enhancing the service’s features and expanding its reach. The goal is to empower even more researchers with the tools they need to tackle some of the most pressing scientific challenges of our time.

Categories
Interactive HPC Research UCloud Use case

DeiC Interactive HPC Crucial for Danish AI Language Models

By Jasper Riis-Hansen and Line Ejby Sørensen, Center for Humanities Computing (CHC), Aarhus University

DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud plays a central role in the Danish Foundation Models (DFM) project, which forms part of the Danish government’s strategic initiative for artificial intelligence.

Danish Foundation Models (DFM) is supported by the Ministry of Digital Affairs as part of the national AI strategy, which aims to ensure that Denmark has access to advanced and tailored language models. These models are intended for use across a wide range of sectors, including healthcare, public administration, education, and private enterprise.

A shared digital environment

The DFM project brings together Danish universities, research institutions, and industry partners in a joint effort to establish new standards for ethically responsible and inclusive AI language technologies.

The project is a collaboration between Aarhus University, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Southern Denmark, and the Alexandra Institute. DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud plays a vital role in this work by providing high data security, scalable computing power, and, not least, an accessible, secure, national cloud platform that enables collaboration among project partners.

“UCloud forms the foundation for an important step in research digitalisation, as the platform provides easy access to computing power, enabling scalable data analysis and modelling, while also offering a secure environment for handling sensitive data. The platform also facilitates collaboration across institutions and allows us to manage data access as needed. This is particularly relevant in the DFM project, which includes many partners participating at different levels.”
Postdoc Kenneth Enevoldsen

Data security and computing power

Because AI models are often trained on sensitive data, it is crucial that data processing complies with both GDPR and Danish security standards. UCloud is ISO27001-certified and specifically designed to meet both Danish and EU requirements for secure data handling.

“In the DFM project, we work with very large amounts of data from a variety of sources – including sensitive data that the models are trained on – and this places high demands on data security. That is why UCloud is such a valuable tool for the project – precisely because of its high level of data security and access to scalable computing power.”
Postdoc Kenneth Enevoldsen

Although DFM also makes use of European supercomputers such as LUMI in Finland and Leonardo in Italy, the day-to-day operations of the project are heavily reliant on UCloud. In addition to being a springboard for high-performance computing, UCloud also provides a secure and user-friendly platform with a wide range of accessible applications – all essential for daily research, collaboration, data processing, and innovation across the project’s interdisciplinary team.

Critical infrastructure for Danish AI development

DFM’s principal investigators, Kristoffer Nielbo and Peter Schneider-Kamp, emphasise that the robust digital research environment provided by DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud constitutes critical infrastructure. It streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and accelerates the development of both language and AI technologies.

“Without UCloud, the DFM project would have had to develop this type of digital infrastructure itself – with significant time and financial costs. The platform’s role in the project clearly demonstrates how robust, collaborative digital research environments are essential to Denmark’s AI strategies.”

FACTS: Danish Foundation Models (DFM)

Danish Foundation Models (DFM) is a collaborative project involving Aarhus University, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Southern Denmark, and the Alexandra Institute.

The project is supported by the Ministry of Digital Affairs with a grant of DKK 30.7 million and aims to develop advanced language models with open access and transparent development processes.

The models are specifically tailored to Danish and other Scandinavian languages and cultures and are intended for use across sectors such as healthcare, public administration, education, and business.

DFM seeks to establish a new standard for ethically responsible, inclusive, and transparent AI language technology – for the benefit of both Danish society and the research community.

For more information, visit: Danish Foundation Models, Ministry of Digital Affairs press release

Categories
Supercomputing Teaching UCloud

Host university courses on UCloud

A new feature has been launched on the innovative UCloud platform, designed to provide a seamless and efficient learning experience for both educators and students. If you are teaching a course at a Danish University and would like to have a setup ready to use for students with all the necessary tools pre-installed and easy access to lectures and teaching materials, the new UCloud course feature is perfect for you.

Cloud-Based Learning: A virtual “lab” for your class 

UCloud leverages the power of cloud computing to offer a robust and scalable environment for courses. The new UCloud course feature means that you can focus on teaching while UCloud handles the infrastructure, ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted learning experience.

Whether you are teaching data science, machine learning, natural language processing or any other subject, UCloud supports a wide range of tools and applications. This flexibility allows you to integrate your preferred software and resources effortlessly.

“A course on UCloud is essentially like having a lab for the class. Everything needed is already installed and the students can easily choose the appropriate resources in terms of teaching materials and installation libraries,” says Dr. Federica Lo Verso, Computational Scientist at the SDU eScience Center and part of the Research Support Team.

Once the course is on UCloud, it can be found in the App Store in the section “Courses” under “Browse by category”.

An example of a “Course” selection is the one below which contains a course from AU. All the relevant software packages, notebooks, scripts etc. for the course are already ‘wrapped’ into the app, which allows students to access the full material quickly and seamlessly without having to install any software themselves.

For the full story about hosting courses on UCloud:

Read more
Categories
UCloud Workshop

Workshops on UCloud AI applications

Join us for two free online workshops this December to explore how these tools can transform your work. Discover AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Workshop 1:
Introduction to AI Tools on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Date: December 10th

Time: 12:30–14:00

This beginner-friendly session will introduce you the basics of AI tools with a focus on transcription and text annotation. Learn how to use these tools to streamline tasks like analyzing text and creating datasets.

Highlights:

  • Intro to fundamental AI tools
  • Hands-on demonstrations
  • Live Q&A

Whether you’re familiar with DeiC Interactive HPC -UCloud or exploring DeiC Interactive HPC -UCloud for the first time, this workshop will provide practical skills to get started.

Workshop 2:
Advanced AI Tool Development on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Date: December 11th

Time: 12:30–14:00

For experienced users ready to go deeper! Discover advanced tools like Nvidia Nemo and Triton to design and develop custom AI solutions.

Highlights:

  • Advanced AI application design
  • Tool showcases
  • Live Q&A

This workshop will focus on more advanced AI tools, offering researchers insights into designing and developing their own AI solutions.
It will showcase the Nvidia apps, Nemo and Triton, available on DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud, both specifically designed to support these efforts.

DeiC Interactive HPC provides researchers at Danish universities with access to a variety of AI applications on UCloud that enable them to accelerate their research through powerful and secure computational tools.

During two online workshops on December 10th and 11th, the DeiC Interactive HPC Consortium will introduce both new and experienced users to DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI app portfolio.

The sessions are designed to equip researchers and students with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively harness DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI tools for their research.

Feel free to share with colleagues and peers who might benefit. See you there!