The Cloud Infrastructure for Microbial Bioinformatics (CLIMB) is the world’s only cloud computing service dedicated to microbiology and was developed by UK scientists. Over the past ten years through support from UK Research and Innovation it has been a pioneer in the development of the UK research infrastructure landscape and has transformed microbial-omics research and pathogen surveillance.

Over the past decade CLIMB has made a significant global impact. During the Covid pandemic, CLIMB provided the COG-UK consortium with the core cloud infrastructure that enabled the UK to become a world leader in SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance, processing over 3.5 million genomes to date, stood up in March 2020.

CLIMB also supports pathogen surveillance for UK agencies such as the UK Health Security Agency and Food Standards Agency by supporting real-time analysis of emerging threats across the UK public health system (HPRU with UKHSA, PATH-SAFE and mSCAPE).

CLIMB is transitioning to a self-sustaining operational model led by the Quadram Institute, working with research delivery partners including the University of Birmingham and Cardiff University.

What is CLIMB?

CLIMB (Cloud Infrastructure for Microbial Bioinformatics) is a UK-based research infrastructure that provides:

• A federated cloud computing infrastructure specifically designed for microbial bioinformatics
• Shared software environments across multiple sites enabling reproducible analyses
• User-friendly access to high-performance computing resources
•  Elimination of the need for individual researchers to manage servers
• Centralised support and expertise

Five CLIMB facts

• CLIMB has so far been an enabler for £40M of research funding across UK institutions
• CLIMB has more than 500 active users over 120 teams (and 2,500 over its lifetime)
• There are 350+ scientific publications acknowledging CLIMB or CLIMB-BIG-DATA
• CLIMB-COVID: processed 3.5 million SARS-CoV-2 genomes during the pandemic
• The CLIMB team has delivered dozens of training events to more than 1,500 scientists

Nick Loman has been appointed Academic Director of CLIMB at the Quadram Institute alongside his role as Professor of Microbial Genomics & Bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham and is working with Lisa Marchioretto (CLIMB Operations Manager) to continue to build on the platform’s achievements.

Professor Loman said: “I’m delighted to be taking on this role with the CLIMB team at the Quadram. CLIMB is an outstanding and unique capability which has already delivered remarkable impact globally and is ideally placed to support large more complex datasets for human and animal microbiome research more widely, both here in the UK and globally.”

Quadram Institute Chief Operating Officer Dr Graeme Brown said: “CLIMB is a unique capability developed and run by UK scientists and more than proved its worth during the pandemic. Hosting the world’s only cloud service dedicated to microbiology is a tremendous asset for researchers in the UK and further afield.”

CLIMB offering

Paid for services for CLIMB users:

• Starter pack, good for a single user or a very small team (not a team of bioinformaticians): one CLIMB Notebook server (8CPU/64GB RAM) + 6CPU for NextFlow tasks, 500TB FastSSD Storage and 1TB S3 storage starts at £1,200/year or £160/month excl. VAT
• Training plans starting at £30 per participant per week excl. VAT
• We offer GPUs (full access to one A100 GPU) – quotation for this is upon request
• No charge for data transfer

For more information about CLIMB contact Operations Manager Lisa Marchioretto