Research IT

Have a Chat with Research IT!

Did you know that we run fortnightly help sessions throughout term time where researchers and PGRs can speak to a member of our team about any research IT issues they may have?

Over the 22/23 academic year Research IT held 22 online RIT Drop-In Sessions fortnightly on Wednesday afternoons throughout term time and occasionally during the summer holidays as well! The great advantage of being live online is that we can deal with many queries there and then.

The drop-in sessions are staffed by representatives from the teams across Research IT ensuring there’s a wide range of expertise and skills on offer to answer the myriad of queries asked.

Over the last year we have dealt with many different queries across all faculties. On the technical side, we’ve helped researchers review their Python code so it can run on the CSF; fixed issues with loading R libraries in R Studio, help write batch scripts for HPC; assist running complex computations on the CSF and getting full use from it by improving efficiencies.

Technical problems can often be fixed during the session themselves, unblocking the path for researchers that have been stuck and allowing them to continue their research right away.

Technical work is not the only thing we can help with. We have given advice on purchasing and licensing various pieces of research software; how to collect research data using encrypted hardware; how to be compliant in the safe storage of sensitive research data and funding applications for our Research Software Engineer time.

More immediate access to the information they need as well as the space and time to ask follow up questions and concerns makes it easier for researchers to move onto the next step in their research and ensures that they know exactly the relevant information that we in Research IT may need to fulfil their requirements.

If it’s research computing related, we can help! and if we don’t know the answer to your particular query or problem we can point you in the right direction or connect you with one of our other Research Software or Platforms Engineers or perhaps even a more relevant team in the University such as the Information Governance Office (IGO).

All our scheduled drop-in sessions can be found on our event page. Drop us a line and we’ll do our best to solve your research related IT problems!

If you can’t wait for the next Drop-in or the timing does not work for you, fill in a support request and a member of our team will pick it up.