Enhance Research, Scholarship, Creative Activity and Academic Innovation
As a research-intensive university, scholarly activity is critical to the university’s success. Whether it is cyberinfrastructure, access to large and advanced data sets or technology tools supporting collaboration with colleagues across communities on or off campus, UTech supports the research mission of CWRU. Discovery, creative activity and innovation are elements that take us all beyond what is possible today to what will be commonplace tomorrow.
CWRU researchers should always have access to the networks, storage, software, specialized equipment and “human capital” to support their efforts. To improve our research environment beyond the sciences, we need a centrally coordinated effort to help researchers discover untapped resources and support, especially in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law and music
Success Stories
In April 2017, Research Computing + Cyberinfrastructure (RCCI) held its third annual Cyberinfrastructure Day, keynoted by an NSF division director, to highlight research by CWRU faculty leveraging cyberinfrastructure. During the year, RCCI more than doubled the number of workshops it offered in the previous year and offered a content-intensive “boot camp” at the start of each semester.
RCCI restructured its workshop and training offerings and added opportunities for researchers and scholars in the arts, humanities, social sciences, management, law and music so they might discover how information technology can be used in their disciplines.
New “exploring” and “tinkering” workshops were added to provide an on-ramp for those new to RCCI services. RCCI continued its workshop offerings in more advanced areas and also served as a satellite site for the national Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) OpenACC workshop.
- Redeployed the Case Connection Zone as a testbed for faculty research
- Hosted faculty workshops for non-traditional users of research computing services
- Supported increasing student use of HPC cluster in formal classes and also in connection with the DataFest event sponsored by the Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics
- Created and distributed a monthly electronic newsletter for RCCI to improve awareness of services and activities
- Carried out a formal evaluation of the use of public cloud resources in connection with HPC and research storage services to ensure the continuous offering of the best technology solutions to the university community
- Instituted formal annual reviews of all research computing services and service processes, including five-year plans for operations and hardware refresh
- Acknowledged by authors of 272 research publications and scholarly works for UTech services
- Supported 15 research funding efforts totaling over $53 million