
Illinois Computes is a campus-wide initiative dedicated to making computational resources more accessible and effective for researchers across all disciplines, helping faculty and students enhance their research without worrying about technical barriers. This initiative provides (at no cost to faculty and other researchers) computing, storage, and other technology resources, alongside consulting expertise, to researchers across campus. Illinois Computes supports all disciplines and domains and is committed to meeting researchers where they are, regardless of whether they are already experts at using research computing technologies or are completely new to the idea.
In this Q&A, Illinois Computes director Chuck Thompson and assistant director Kjellrun Olson share how Illinois Computes supports diverse research needs, key features relevant to social and behavioral scientists, and how researchers can easily connect with its services.
For those who are unfamiliar, could you provide an overview of how Illinois Computes addresses the diverse research needs of faculty and students, and how can researchers leverage these to enhance their work?
Illinois Computes is funded by campus to serve the entire campus research community – regardless of discipline and domain. We recognize there is great variability in what researchers need in terms of basic compute, storage, tools, services, software, and expert support for using these technologies. Illinois Computes aims to make resources easier to find, access, and use for all researchers, all at no cost.
When Illinois Computes launched, the first step was to make many existing compute, storage, and expertise resources at NCSA available to researchers and to then broaden our offerings. NCSA has expert staff available to help researchers learn about tools and technology and understand how technology can enhance their research. This can range anywhere from helping deal with data sets that have grown too large for a laptop, to providing a place to run codes much faster, helping perfect models and simulations, demonstrating how to realize benefits from AI and machine learning, to providing a secure environment for CUI, HIPAA, ePHI, or other regulated data.
Illinois Computes is ready to help! Let us know what your needs are. You do not have to know what technologies and expertise will best aid you. We can help you figure that out! We have people who can answer questions and address issues ranging from the very basic to very advanced.
Are there any features of Illinois Computes you’d like to highlight for social and behavioral science researchers?
Illinois Computes does have resources and support that are used today by social and behavioral science researchers, but we realize we have gaps in what is needed to truly support this community. To aid in identifying these gaps and prioritizing efforts to begin addressing them, we created an Illinois Computes Social and Behavioral Science Advisory Board.
The first meeting was held on January 7 and provided rich input from 14 social and behavioral science researchers from across campus. While we are still working to fully process the output from this meeting, some notable items from it include the need for easy to use mid-level compute environments (larger than a laptop, smaller than a supercomputer), expertise in R, and a range of data management needs including backups, easy to search active data repositories with clear access and sharing protocols, data de-identification, and many more. Updates will be provided in the monthly Illinois Computes Connections newsletter. Email illinois-computes@illinois.edu to subscribe.
If researchers would like to use Illinois Computes, how do they get in touch, what do they need to provide, and what can they expect?
The best place to go for more information and to get started with Illinois Computes is the website: https://computes.illinois.edu/. The big button “Get Started” on the website will connect you with Illinois Computes’ staff, who will work with you to answer any of your questions. Our team is ready to help you access the resources you need. For general inquiries, you can also email illinois-computes@illinois.edu
Remember, all resources and support provided by Illinois Computes is available to researchers at no cost!