Funding for Technology Costs

[MissData]

I'm a PhD student and one of the things I focus on is building tools that other researchers can use to make data analysis easier for them. My adviser has a website where he makes his tools available and has suggested to me that I should also get a website. I know websites are pretty cheap, but I'm also interested in purchasing some super computer time from my university.

 

Does anyone know of any technology grants which might cover costs like these? I'm struggling because these are pretty general needs and not tied to a specific researcher project.

[Cookie]

Regarding computer time, you can write a proposal and have your advisor apply for allocations on XSEDE or NERSC... They are free for research purposes.

Are you sure you have to pay for computer time at your institution? Most schools dont charge research labs for that, although the queue system might give your calculations lower priority than those who contribute the hardwares.

[rising_star]

Your university probably offers free website hosting to its faculty, staff, and graduate students. You should contact your campus IT staff about it. This wouldn't give you your own domain name but would allow you to post the tools you use on the web and make them available to others.

[TakeruK]

Also, consider things like Github if you want to simply share your data analysis tools. In astronomy, Github is quickly growing to be the best method to share code (especially code that is evolving, since it does version control and your users can automatically get code updates as you fix bugs etc.)

 

As for supercomputer time, in my field, grants do cover this. You wouldn't apply for a grant that is just for computer time, you would generally apply for a grant that covers your research and one of the budget line items could be super computer time.

[MissData]

Thanks all! I already have a webpage through my university, but I and my adviser have some concern about continuity of source when I move institutions. I always find it frustrating when I'm reading a paper and it says I can find materials at a specific webpage, but it turns out the faculty has moved schools. My adviser has his own website not through the university for this reason and I would like to as well.

 

There is a certain amount of super computing time designated to our department, but unfortunately we're pretty much always overbudgetted on it so it's very competitive to get time. I can use a research grant to "buy" additional time for myself, so I thought this would be better than trying to battle full professors for time to run my simulations.

[ballwera]

You would write the grant around building the tool, then budget for wall time, storage costs and possibly funding for a stand alone server. 

[Cookie]

Allocation time on super computers are very very easy to get. Typically, it involves writing a short, easy proposal of a few pages. In my lab, although we already have our own (small) cluster, we still apply for more time! Whoever in the project writes the proposal and my PI submits. And we always get the hours we asked for (starting with 50,000 SU and up). I dont know anyone who couldnt get some.