| # | Name | Comments |
|---|
| 251 | Peter B. Karadakov | |
| 252 | Anonymous | |
| 253 | Dr Paul Hodgkinson | Putting everything into responsive mode is barmy. The whole point of strategic investments, such as the National Services, is that they provide shared facilities which save money that would be otherwise wasted on duplicated facilities. |
| 254 | David Hodgson | The massive cost effectiveness of such services is undeniable, so why get rid of something that is (relatively) cheap given the impacts these services have on the underpinning of physical sciences in the UK? |
| 255 | Hendrik Nahler | |
| 256 | P.W. Dyer | |
| 257 | Martyn P Coles | |
| 258 | Alan Kenwright | |
| 259 | PROFJUDITH A K HOWARD, FRS | This service has been essential for underpinning the research of many groups over many years and has evolved to keep pace with modern methods, providing up to date IT services as well as the computational power and interfaces needed by research staff and training students/PDRAs.
The UK needs to 'up' its skills set. Closing down widely used national services such as NSCCS will not support the recent pleas from CBI, employers and educationalists, who compare our trained manpower adversely to other countries. Cutting funding to individual researchers [EPSRC Chemistry panels recent success rates 4-10% !!] has demotivated staff across the board and maintaining central facilities/services becomes even more important if there are no resources available to these academics locally. The EPSRC should re-think its policies and look to longer term strategic issues if previously ring fenced, crucial, under-pinning support activities are to be curtailed without warning. |
| 260 | Chris Greenwell | Keep this service and invest in it, including advertising it! |
| 261 | Prof John N Hay | |
| 262 | Steve Lamond | The loss of such a well-used service will put UK research at a disadvantage with respect to other countries. Perhaps more worrying is that other nationally funded services may also be similarly affected. |
| 263 | Carmen Domene | |
| 264 | Neil Berry | |
| 265 | Richard Thompson | |
| 266 | Chris Jeynes | This course of action by EPSRC is equivalent to terminating the Facility since it is impossible for a national service to rank highly enough in the categories suitable for responsive mode grants.
Such a course of action runs aounter to EPSRC's declared policy |
| 267 | Dr Eckart Wrede | |
| 268 | Donna Blackmond | |
| 269 | Prof Stephen Neidle | The NSCCS has played a really important role in ensuring that computational chemistry in the UK is available to a large number of non-specialist groups. It has also established excellent training courses, which have helped a large number of students, post-docs and individual research groups to get into this area. Quite simply its loss will have a significant and deterimental effect on UK chemical sciences. Yet the EPSRC has ignored all those who have protested.
The mission of the EPSRC is to "Promote and support, by any means, high quality basic, strategic and applied research and related postgraduate training in engineering and the physical sciences". They have failed to do so for the NSCCS, and by implication, will treat other services in the same way. This is a profound failure on the part of the senior officers and Council of EPSRC to maintain the science base of the UK. |
| 270 | Georgina Aitken | The nsccs is an invaluable tool for any chemist who needs to learn and use computational chemistry software but may not have the personal resources to run the sometimes expensive calculations. Nsccs can offer a wide variety of people the chance to run such calculations at reasonable cost. |
| 271 | Andy Wilson | |
| 272 | Robin Westacott |
| 273 | Jennifer Green | |
| 274 | Dr M. A. Carroll | The service has been critical in supporting our EPSRC funded research |
| 275 | B L Sharp | My group are first time users of the the NSCCS service having commenced our current project in July 2007. The training/support and access to high level software has had a major impact on a number of our projects and improved the quality of our science. I find it hard to understand the logic of stopping this national service which is a highly efficient way of providing access to computational chemistry. |
| 276 | David Nutt | The NSCCS provides an invaluable resource to the academic community in the UK, particularly those who do not have the resources to design, buy, run and maintain their own computer cluster and associated software. It is therefore an essential service, available to everyone, for performing high quality computational research. |
| 277 | William O George | The facility has been crucial in providing opportunities to staff and research students. High standards have been achieved by the excellent support of the teams at Imperial College and RAL Didcot. The interactions have been inspirational |
| 278 | Wynne Evans | |
| 279 | Jonathan Goodman | |
| 280 | Jonathan Goodman | |
| 281 | Ian Williams |
| 282 | Paul Mulheran | |
| 283 | Henry Rzepa | |
| 284 | Dr J. Robin Fulton | The continuation of NSCCS and other national services is vital for the health of UK research, keeping the UK competitive at an international level, as well as ensuring that the next generation of UK scientists have enough support to start and continue their research careers. |
| 285 | Martin Grayson | The service is so useful, by providing access to the many programs which chemists need to use. If one had to implement, and maintain all the programs oneself it would take most of the year. This is not to mention the training and documentation service. |
| 286 | Rhobert Lewis | This service is unique in that it offers supercomputer support for theoretical calculations within computational chemistry to institutions irrespective of geographical location and computer facilities within the organisation. This is particularly valuable with smaller institutions which are not based in cities. It is difficult to see where equivalent support will be provided once the facility terminates. |
| 287 | Dr Lawrence Davies | |
| 288 | Stephen H. Ashworth | |
| 289 | Anonymous | |