Research Partnerships
The primary mission of the Center for Advanced Research Computing is to support USC researchers in their computational work. CARC strives to provide an excellent user experience, both on an ad hoc basis and through ongoing partnerships with research teams.
In 2014, CARC (then called the Center for High-Performance Computing) was the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant (#1341935) to support the development of a high-performance computing facilitation program. Today, CARC employs multiple full-time Research Facilitators to provide support to the USC research community. CARC's Research Facilitation & Applications team enhances research computing at USC through education, outreach, general user support, and collaborative research partnerships.
General user support
Our Research Facilitators offer regular onboarding sessions and weekly office hours, introductory and advanced training workshops, as well as in-person and remote consultations. Individual support requests are handled through a user ticketing system.
Collaborative partnerships
In addition to general user support, CARC offers a more in-depth, collaborative experience for researchers with specific and diverse needs. This type of specialized partnership is aimed at research teams that require ongoing customized support for their research projects, including data management, software installation, programming, and workflow development. Examples can be found on our Current Projects page.
With partnerships, our Research Facilitators function as technical consultants for researchers, offering their skills and expertise in various facets of research computing. Examples of collaborative activities include:
- Optimizing hardware and software
- Developing scripts, programs, and workflows
- Profiling and debugging code
- Developing science gateways
For more information on research partnerships at CARC, please contact us at carc-support@usc.edu.
Current Partnerships
The Center for Advanced Research Computing is proud to hold collaborative relationships with the organizations below. In addition to these, CARC is actively seeking other partnerships that will broaden its research opportunities and expand its outreach.
USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI)
CARC works directly with the Information Sciences Institute at USC by collaborating on certain projects and grant proposals. As CARC continues to develop its new systems, further collaboration on the ISI's multi-institutional projects is expected.
From their website:
"The Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a world leader in research and development of advanced information processing, computer and communications technologies.
A unit of the University of Southern California’s highly ranked Viterbi School of Engineering, ISI is one of the nation’s largest, most successful university-affiliated computer research institutes. The Institute attracts over $100 million annually for basic and applied research from federal agencies and the private sector.
Our work ranges from theoretical basic research, such as core engineering and computer science discovery, to applied research and development, such as design and modeling of innovative prototypes and devices."
Cryo-EM facility and collaborations with Dornsife, Amgen, ITS, and ISI
Beginning in 2021, USC Dornsife and Amgen house two cryo-EM microscopes at USC, operated by the Center of Excellence in Nano Imaging. CARC is leading the collaborative effort with other ITS teams to create a full research ecosystem for the USC cryo-EM research community, including user interface, data and computational workflow management platform, and special GPU cluster deployment.
The microscopes transmit up to 16 TB of refined data (images near atomic resolution) per day to USC servers and to Amgen's AWS cloud storage. USC researchers at Dornsife, Viterbi, Keck School of Medicine, and other USC research institutes make use of the microscropes for their research.
Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS)
ACCESS is the nation's largest academic research computing community that facilitates the sharing of high-performance computing resources among researchers. CARC is a member of the ACCESS community and benefits from access to other members' services. In the future, CARC expects to share its own computing resources with members of the ACCESS community.
From their website:
"The national research cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem is essential to computational- and data-intensive research across all of 21st-century science and engineering (S&E). It’s driven by rapid advances in a wide range of technologies, increasing volumes of highly heterogeneous data and escalating demand by the research community.
Research CI is a key catalyst for discovery and innovation. It plays a critical role in ensuring U.S. leadership in S&E, economic competitiveness and national security, consistent with the National Science Foundation’s mission. The NSF, through the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC), has published a vision that calls for the broad availability and innovative use of an agile, integrated, robust, trustworthy and sustainable CI ecosystem that can drive new thinking and transformative discoveries in all areas of S&E research and education."
Research Computing
3434 South Grand Avenue
3rd Floor (CAL Building)
Los Angeles, CA 90089
carc-support@usc.edu
Mailing List
Sign up to receive information about upcoming
system upgrades, events, and announcements.