A new EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) case study—“Empowering Technology Research Support”—details how two UW units apply best practices to help advance the work of UW researchers. The UW receives more federal research funding than any other public university, and UW’s eScience Institute and UW-IT support the research community’s vast and sophisticated technology needs by incorporating technologically innovative solutions in areas such as data analysis, cloud services, high-performance computing, digital asset management, collaboration, and high-speed data networking. Use your UW NetID and the “Institution” InCommon login to access the case study.

Earth, ocean, sky, and space researchers and technologists will discuss the cyberinfrastructure challenges they face in their respective fields at the University of Hawaii (UoH) February 12-13. Co-sponsored by the UW, UC Davis, and UoH, the event provides an opportunity to explore—with Microsoft and Internet2 NET+ Services—the role of commercial cloud offerings in supporting the emerging big data research needs. Get more information.

Researchers can access nearly thirty years’ worth of step-by-step laboratory protocols from the life and biomedical sciences, written and reviewed by experts in their fields, using SpringerProtocols. These protocols are time-tested and easily reproducible. Subjects range from biochemistry, cell biology, and infectious diseases to genetics, immunology, and plant sciences, with protocols from a wide variety of well-respected sources. This e-resource is brought to you by the UW Libraries.

Scopus is a preeminent multi-disciplinary database for peer-reviewed research literature and scholarly Web sources. Track and analyze research activity using its rich treasure trove of citation data. See who has cited a particular author or article; discover the main journals, disciplines, and authors that publish in your areas of interest; compare journals using various metrics; and track research trends. This UW-restricted e-resource is brought to you by the UW Libraries and the Office of Research. 

UW faculty who report effort on a calendar-year cycle now are able to certify their effort reports electronically. This faster, easier, online certification replaces the paper-based process and meets compliance-based reporting requirements for grant research. (Those reporting on the academic cycle can begin online certification in April.) This latest phase of the Electronic Faculty Effort and Cost Sharing (eFECS) project improves timeliness, security, online status tracking, and integrated calculations for cost share adjustments. Feedback from user focus groups informed this effort by eFECS advisory groups and UW-IT.

Saving, organizing, and sharing your citations is easy with the new, improved version of RefWorks, a UW-restricted citation management tool brought to you by UW Libraries. The updated interface let’s you store, navigate, and disseminate research materials you've gathered from a variety of sources, including catalogs, databases, and Web pages. RefWorks also saves you time by automatically formatting your bibliographies into whatever style you need.

When the City of Seattle wanted to develop an online Seattle Public Safety Survey, it turned to the UW Evans School of Public Affairs. Graduate students drafted the survey, using Catalyst WebQ, to gather residents’ views of public safety and the Seattle Police Department. Results are due in May.

Some UW researchers doing computational, data-intensive work are now plugged in to a high-performance computer cluster in the new UW Tower Data Center. Called Hyak (Chinook for “fast”), this shared supercomputer is made available through eScience Institute sponsorship of specific colleges, currently Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and the Environment. Phase one (one-third of Hyak’s capacity) was completed in August 2010. Additional sponsorships for the remaining capacity are available. This partnership with UW-IT to satisfy campus research computing requirements resulted in skill and technology transfer, reducing costs and increasing UW efficiency and productivity.