What do researchers do with IT?What do they want from ITS?

Heidi Fraser-KraussUniversity of York

Context

• Central ITS had traditionally done nothing to support research

• York, as part of the N8, had acquired access to the joint HPC facility – But wasn’t using its share– Compsci were the gateway to the N8 and the

gateway was hidden !• I saw an opportunity

What we did

• With the support of the Dean of Science we formed a working group of researchers chaired by an academic from Physics

• I freed up a member of staff to focus on technical research support

• Initial focus of the WG was HPC but:– Group felt that the issue was wider– And instigated a questionnaire to investigate

training and software needs

Software and training needs questionnaire

• Biographical data – Department– Research Group

• Software use and importance to research• Software needs• Training needs and preferences• Level of expertise in use of software

Software and training needs questionnaire

• 328 responses in total• 27/28 Academic departments

responded.• The sciences (59%) and social sciences

(30%) were the biggest participants. • Over 260 different applications are

actively used in York.

Top 20 pieces of software

Most wanted pieces of softwareNote the overlap!

.

How we used this information• We bought a site license for Matlab• We brought a site license for Qualtrics• We have established classroom based

training courses for Matlab, R, Python and Linux and now have a wiki for advertising courses that others provide

• We’ve got a dialogue going with researchers• We’ve installed the major pieces of software

on our mini HPC cluster

Infrastructure Questionnaire• Biographical data• Hardware.– Type of research done with computers.– Operating systems – Computer specs

• Storage– Do you backup your research data?– Where?

• Wi-Fi.• Training courses and information.• General Comments.

Infrastructure Questionnaire

• 244 responses in total.• 34 separate departments• 50 research institutes

Responses by department

What do you use your computer for?

Operating system use Use computers mainly for word processing, spread sheets, presentationsData analysis

Programming tasksSimulations/modelling

Where is research done?

Would more powerful hardware help?

• Do researchers think their research would be significantly improved if they had access to larger/faster machines? (93 responses)

• Yes 33% • Not sure 13%• No 54%

• Percentage of researchers who said yes or not sure who would be interested in receiving help to run computing jobs on larger/faster machines.

• Yes 42% • Not sure 44%• No 6%

Storage

• Are you storing your research data in a facility that is not part of, or located at the University of York (196 people responded)? – Yes 67 % – No 33 %

• Do you have colleagues from other institutions that access data stored at the University of York (196 people)? – Yes 20 % – No 80 %

• Would you be interested in using the data storage facilities provided by the University of York and IT services (196 people)? – Yes 54%– No 14% – I am already using these facilities. 32%

Do you backup your research?• 91 % of those who responded claim to

backup their research.• There seems to be no correlation

between department or job title from those who do not back-up their research.

Where are research data stored?• 49 % of researches report backing up their data on personal external hard disks,

44% on departmental storage and 20% using storage provided by IT Services.• It also seems that many people are using Dropbox, Google cloud and Apple iCloud

to store their data.

Comments• “The availability of cores and memory limits research

questions that I can address. More of both would help. But another barrier is the time needed to train, program and interface with distributed systems. A more desktop-like experience would help. “

• “I use Dropbox for everything because it is reliable and accessible and (apparently) free. But I'd prefer this to be a UoY service. I guess I could use the Google based services for this, but they're nothing like as easy as Dropbox.”

Comments • “I do think a central storage facility for raw

research data would be very useful. Backing-up data seems like an individual endeavor for unsupported machines. Other Universities seem more proactive about this. “

• “No additional storage space given for PhD students by the university. When I have enquired about obtaining extra filespace, I have been informed by the IT Support Office that it is not possible to increase my filestore quota. “

Questions?

Thanks to Dr Emma Barnes and Dr Andrew

Smith