What Can Research IT Do for Faculty?

Research IT: A Division of OU Information Technology

If you have big data- and/or computing-intensive research/scholarship in any Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Business, Humanitiesand/or Media discipline, we’re here to help.

What is Research IT?

  • The OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) is a multidisciplinary center that provides supercomputing education, expertise and resources to OU undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty, as well as their off-campus collaborators. If you have big data-and/or computing-intensive problems that need heavy number crunching, OSCER is the answer. http://www.oscer.ou.edu/
  • The Oklahoma PetaStore is a large-scale storage resource, with multiple Petabytes (millions of GB). Research teams pay for their own media (tape cartridges) only, with all other costs covered by an external grant and OU.
  • The OU Research Cloud is real hardware for deploying virtual computers. Research teams pay for their virtual computers and required software, at much lower financial, labor and expertise cost than running their own.
  • OU Informatics, a joint effort between University Libraries and IT, focuses on using large scale data in research. If your research involves large data collections, we have professionals for hire whose expertise spans a broad range of strategies and technologies for turning data into knowledge and knowledge into insight.
  • OneOklahoma Friction Free Network:OU and Oklahoma State U are connected via OneNet (Oklahoma’s research, education and government network)to the national 100 Gbps research backbone. OU IT leads a statewide team that is building a multi-institution research-only network, side-by-side with campus enterprise networks, for high performance “friction-free” and software defined networking across several institutions and out to the rest of the country and the world.

Who is Using Research IT?Over 1000 undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty, in over 20 departments in OU’s Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Atmospheric & Geographical Sciences, Business, Earth & Energy, Engineering, and Medicine, as well as at collaborating institutions statewide,around the US and globally.

Does Research IT Increase Research Productivity?Research IT has facilitated $275M+ in total external funding (on over 250 grants), $165M+ of that to OU, enabling over 1500 publications. Over 1/7 of OU Norman’s total externally funded research has been facilitated by Research IT since 2001.

What are the Broader Impacts?Education/Training: OU’s unique “Supercomputing in Plain English” initiative has taught the core concepts of advanced computing to over 1500 people, not only at OU, but also by videoto institutions across the US and worldwide. We teach novice programmers via analogies, storytelling and play, not jargon or technical details. We also host training by national advanced computing educationleaders. Dissemination: OU hosts the annual Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium. Diversity: The OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, which OU co-leads, has served 100+ institutions and organizations statewide,impacting minority serving, non-PhD-granting and rural institutions.

What Other Grant Proposal Support Benefits Does Research IT Provide?

  • Letters of commitment for access to Research IT resources.
  • Detailed descriptions of facilities, resources, services and physical data management.
  • Project-specific text on research computing issues.
  • Collaborate with us! Research IT staff can participate as Co-PIs, Senior Personnel or consultants.

Contact: Henry Neeman ().For Informatics:Jonah Duckles()