Research Computing

Research at Rice is spread across all academic areas with each researcher having different computing needs. The Office of Information Technology provides a wide range of computing resources and support services to Rice researchers. Some individuals only need assistance with using their personal computer or advise on where to store and back up their data and often these needs are addressed by their divisional representatives of OIT’s Campus Services. Other researchers need much more–such as access to high performance computing resources or visualization tools or access to national resources. Rice's shared research computing infrastructure is provided by OIT's Center for Research Computing (CRC) in partnership with the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.

 

Center for Research Computing

The Center for Research Computing (CRC) acts as the default contact for all research-related service inquiries and represents researcher interests to the larger Office of Information Technology with advice from a faculty working group.

The CRC provides shared facilities and services for computing, visualization, data-storage, and networking designed to support research at Rice University please visit here for details on our resources and how to get access to them:

• High performance computing
  • High-powered computing resources for big datasets.
• Research Data Facility
  • When your project won't fit on, or shouldn't be on, an external hard disk.
• High-speed data transfer
  • When your project is too big for a regular FTP transfer. Specialized, NSF-funded infrastructure for moving large-scale data sets.
• Visualization
  • Help with Visualization of data.
• Virtual Machines
  • Help when your project needs virtual machines.

CRC standing maintenance

On the first Tuesday of every month, the CRC may decide, with minimal notification, to take down systems for a period of up to 24-hours, for preventative maintenance. User notification will be made in advance when possible. The user community should plan computational work assuming maintenance will be executed every month.