Secure data infrastructure project expands UIC research computing strengths
Research runs on data, and data are increasingly complex. Running large-scale analyses and using new artificial intelligence tools requires advanced computational technologies and knowledge.
Now, a year-long effort to securely relocate and store data for the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) – a research, education and outreach program housed in the UIC College of Medicine and led by Chancellor Marie Lynn Miranda – has unlocked new opportunities for UIC researchers.
Advancing UIC Research: The Launch of the Trusted Environment for Research Analytics Heading link
Computational experts from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research group in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Innovation worked closely with the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research to transfer the data. Together, they created the Trusted Environment for Research Analytics, or TERA, a home for Children’s Environmental Health Initiative data that can serve as a model for ambitious research collaborations at UIC in the future.
The collaboration added new infrastructure, practices and policies to UIC’s research computing resources, said Himanshu Sharma, associate chief information officer for research technologies and innovation.
“The project gave my team a lot of new skills and capabilities, which we now can use to support many other research labs at the university,” Sharma said. “It also allowed us to develop new features on the technical infrastructure side to be able to meet their challenges.”
With the data migration complete, the researchers can continue their interdisciplinary research using spatial data analysis to address the influence of social and environmental factors on health and education outcomes.
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These resources will unlock new opportunities for UIC research and action on health equity, environmental justice, and other critical challenges. While TERA is certainly helpful to CEHI, it is meant to be a campus resource, and we welcome researchers interested in or in need of this secure, high-end computing environment.
| Chancellor
A secure environment for complex, protected data Heading link
Building research computing infrastructure for the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative meant solving challenges associated with complex, private data and collaborative science.
The research group constructs spatial data architectures from datasets of health and educational records, addresses and other sensitive information. Each dataset requires research data use agreements with providers that mandate how the data will be stored, accessed and used.
The infrastructure also needs to support the work of dozens of researchers from multiple institutions, requiring secure systems and detailed processes for using the data.
“What is truly impressive about TERA is its ability to support multiple projects led by both UIC and non-UIC-based research collaborators, with varying requirements for sensitive and restricted data,” said Claire Osgood, data manager for the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative. “On top of that, the infrastructure hosts a full suite of statistical and geospatial applications for analyzing data, all within the system.”
A team led by Thelma Majalca, senior project manager for the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research group, added new tools and infrastructure that met the center’s data quality, security and compliance needs. Because some data use agreements forbid using cloud storage, they expanded UIC’s on-campus secure data and computing environments.
“It really took a lot of collaboration, work and patience, just constantly meeting and ensuring that we built something that was solid from the very beginning,” Majalca said.
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It was a big deal for UIC to be able to onboard a project of this scale, and now we can implement those solutions for other groups as well.
| Associate CIO for Research Technologies and Innovation
Driving collaboration and innovation Heading link
With the infrastructure now active, it is already fueling new collaborations at UIC. The resources will be critical to a new center proposed by researchers from the UIC School of Public Health for studying climate change and health and could enable future partnerships with campus researchers studying urban planning, health equity and education.
“Our team is supporting efforts that help other researchers think about using geospatial data,” said Melissa Fiffer, senior research scientist at the Children’s Environmental Health Initiative. “I think we found a wealth of possibilities of people that we can work with at UIC, which has been wonderful.”
The lessons learned in setting up the new infrastructure will also benefit UIC researchers proposing large collaborations that use complex and protected datasets. The resources can also assist in recruiting faculty that will have similar needs in migrating their research data infrastructure to the university, Sharma said.
“It was a big deal for UIC to be able to onboard a project of this scale, and now we can implement those solutions for other groups as well,” Sharma said. “It shows that UIC can onboard big research labs with complex demands, and they can feel confident that they have a good partner that has tackled these challenges in a public university setting.”