The Office of the Vice-President (Research and International) (OVPRI) and Information Technology Services (ITS) are collaborating on a number of initiatives to enhance IT support for researchers.
Initiatives Completed
Over the past two years, ITS and OVPRI have collaborated to deliver on the following initiatives:
- Andrew Schoenrock accepted the position of Manager, Research Computing Services (RCS) in October 2019. Andrew is an accomplished researcher and joins Carleton after working at Health Canada in the Genomics and Genetic Toxicology group. Prior to that, he worked at Carleton in a variety of roles and in a wide range of interdisciplinary and collaborative research areas such as computer science, bioinformatics, computational biology and big data.
Andrew and the RCS team provide researchers with a single point of contact for all of their IT requirements. If you require research-related IT support, please contact either Andrew or Research Computing Services.
- Carleton has acquired new university-wide licenses for the IBM SPSS software, NVivo Plus, and Qualtrics Research Core. All are now administered by ITS and available to all faculty, staff and students, free of charge.
- The MATLAB software (with its many available tool boxes), that is funded by the Faculty of Engineering and Design (FED) and administered by ITS, is available to all faculty, staff and students, free of charge. ITS will start funding this software when its subscription is renewed in November 2020.
- A new research website (carleton.ca) was launched in July 2019 aimed at better showcasing Carleton’s research strengths.
Initiatives in Progress
The following initiatives are currently in development:
- There are now over 600 TB of data storage available to researchers, free of charge. This storage is backed-up and replicated between both of Carleton’s secure data centers. The Citrix Sharefile software required for researchers to facilitate collaborative file sharing that is web based and accessible to both Carleton and non-Carleton researchers, will be available in the summer.
- A new Research Project Approval form has been developed and is currently being piloted by researchers. This simplified form provides a better user experience for submitters and will replace the checklist that currently resides in the cuResearch (ROMEO) website.
- Through a CANARIE funded project, researchers can work with the Research Software Development Team to create purpose-built applications that meet their specific project requirements.
Future Initiatives
The following initiatives are being planned:
- An extensive review of the Research Administration Lifecycle is nearing completion that will lead to recommendations on how to streamline processes and integrate/simplify the information systems that are presently used by Departments, Faculties, CORIS, IPS, Ethics, HR Payroll, FGPA and Research Accounting Services.
- Research Computing Services will continue to act as the single point of contact for all research-related IT support and will further expand and strengthen the types of support offered.
These Initiatives are Supported In Part by the Federal Research Support Fund (RSF) and its Incremental Project Grants (IPG)
The Research Support Fund is a Tri-Agency initiative which assists Canadian postsecondary institutions with the expenses associated with managing the research funded by Canada’s research granting agencies.
The generous contributions of the RSF and its IPG stream are paramount to the success of strategic investments like those listed above.