Yale Center for Research Computing

Yale Center for Research Computing
Name	Yale Center for Research Computing
Formation	2011
Type	Research support center
Headquarters	New Haven, Connecticut
Parent organization	Yale University

Contents

Yale Center for Research Computing is a technology support and research facilitation unit at Yale University that provides high-performance computing, data storage, and research software support to faculty, students, and staff. It operates within Yale University alongside colleges and schools such as Yale School of Medicine, Yale Law School, Yale School of Management, and collaborates with federal agencies and private partners including National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Amazon Web Services. The center supports interdisciplinary projects connected to institutes such as Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale Cancer Center, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and centers affiliated with Yale School of Public Health.

History

The center evolved from earlier computational efforts at Yale that involved units like Yale Information Technology Services, the Yale University Library, and research groups tied to Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science. Its formation followed trends established by national initiatives including the High Performance Computing Modernization Program, the XSEDE project, and investment patterns similar to those at Princeton University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. Early collaborations referenced projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Naval Research, and Department of Energy. Leadership drew on expertise from faculty associated with programs linked to Department of Computer Science at Yale, researchers who had participated in Human Genome Project-era computing, and administrators experienced with Association of American Universities technology consortia. Over time the center paralleled developments at centers such as University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign while adapting to funding shifts influenced by legislation like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Infrastructure investments include on-campus clusters and storage solutions comparable to deployments at National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center's compute resources have supported workloads similar to those running on systems named in projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. Networking integrates with regional research and education networks such as Internet2, New England Research & Education Network, and utilizes cloud platforms offered by providers like Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM. Physical operations take place in data center facilities akin to those used by Yale School of Architecture for modeling, while storage architectures mirror approaches documented by The Library of Congress and large-scale projects at European Organization for Nuclear Research. Resources support software stacks built on toolchains referenced by projects at GNU Project, Apache Software Foundation, and libraries commonly used by groups affiliated with Simons Foundation grants.

The center offers services for computational research across domains associated with institutes such as Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and laboratories collaborating with Yale School of Medicine. Supported research topics intersect with initiatives led by faculty who have affiliations with awards like the MacArthur Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Service areas include high-performance computing allocations modeled after procedures at Compute Canada, data management planning inspired by Digital Public Library of America, and reproducible research practices promoted by groups like Open Science Framework and National Institutes of Health data policies. The center provides consulting akin to that offered by university units at University of Michigan, Columbia University, and University of California, San Diego, helping teams working on projects linked to Yale Cancer Center, Yale Center for Genomics & Proteomics, and collaborations with national laboratories.

Training programs target users across Yale schools including Yale College, Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yale School of Medicine, and professional schools such as Yale Law School and Yale School of Management. Workshops and courses draw on pedagogical models used by initiatives like Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and curricula developed at institutions such as University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. The center organizes seminars featuring speakers from organizations such as Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. It supports student research linked to prizes and fellowships including the Rhodes Scholarship, Fulbright Program, and internal awards administered by Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science.

Partnership networks include collaborations with federal entities like National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Energy, as well as private sector partners exemplified by Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft. Academic collaborations extend to peer centers at Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, and consortia such as Big Ten Academic Alliance and Ivy League. The center engages in multi-institution projects funded through programs run by National Endowment for the Humanities, Simons Foundation, and cross-disciplinary initiatives with museums and archives including Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and New York Public Library.

Governance involves administrators and faculty liaisons drawn from units like Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, Office of Research Administration at Yale University, and the Provost of Yale University. Funding mixes institutional support from Yale University with competitive grants from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, philanthropic gifts from donors affiliated with foundations such as Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Ford Foundation, and cost-recovery contracts with corporate partners including Amazon Web Services and Google. Budgetary oversight references policies similar to those used by university offices participating in Association of American Universities initiatives and complies with reporting practices influenced by federal agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget.