Research Computing Resources - StrongBox and Colonial One

Support

The preferred method for requesting support is to access the GWSPH IT Helpdesk and submit a ticket.

StrongBox 

The Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) has established a state-of-the-art infrastructure to fulfill the research needs of our faculty, research staff and their students as it relates to high-speed data analysis, data storage, and collaborative data sharing. Entitled, “StrongBox,” this service is customized for our Milken Institute SPH researchers and provides a comprehensive suite of analytical software applications and a secure centrally managed, cloud-based data storage service. Strongbox will support research and applied research instruction of the Milken Institute SPH faculty and their graduate students and post-docs. Researchers may use the system to (a) store and preserve their research data for future research and “training” sets for students; (b) work with both small and large-scale research datasets, and (c) collaborate more effectively on research with colleagues and students across schools and departments.  For more information and to set up an account, click here.

Information about StrongBox and How to Apply for an Account (PDF)
Instructions on Logging into StrongBox (PDF)

Secured Research Platform for Data Collection, Data Analysis and Data Storage

The Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) has established a relationship with the cloud vendor Armor Defense to support a highly secure infrastructure to fulfill the research needs of our faculty, research staff and their students as it relates to high-speed data analysis, data storage, and collaborative data sharing.  Armor Defense has customized a service for our Milken Institute SPH researchers and highly secured centrally managed, cloud-based data storage service. This system supports research and applied research instruction of the Milken Institute SPH faculty and their graduate students and post-docs. Researchers may use the system to work with both small and large-scale research datasets, and collaborate more effectively on research with colleagues and students across schools and departments. It also allows for inter institutional collaboration in which researchers are able to collaborate and share access to data across the world.

Armor Defense is certified against the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) to address HIPAA compliance requirements. The Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), in collaboration with healthcare, business, technology and information security leaders, has established the HITRUST CSF, a certifiable framework that can be used by any and all organizations that create, access, store or exchange personal health and financial information.  Armor inherently meets  the FIPS 140-2 standard.

 For more details and information on how to setup an Armor account, click here.

Colonial One

For research needs that use high-performance computing for data analysis, GW recently implemented the new shared high-performance computing cluster named Colonial One, which is implemented and managed by professional staff in the Research Services Group within the Division of Information Technology, assisted by GW-sponsored computational staff in the Computational Biology Institute and the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. Access to Colonial One is open to the GW community. Colonial One is housed in one of GW's two enterprise-class datacenters and is located on the Virginia Science and Technology Campus. The datacenter features professional IT management by GW’s central Division of IT - including 24-hour on-premise and remote environment monitoring with hourly staff walk-throughs; redundant power distribution including UPS (battery) and generator backup; redundant cooling systems utilizing a dedicated chilled water plant and a glycol refrigeration system; and direct network connectivity to GW’s robust 100 Gigabit fiber optic network.

Biostatistics and Epidemiology Consulting Service

The Biostatistics and Epidemiology Consulting Service (BECS) is embedded in the Milken Institute School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and provides biostatistical, epidemiological, and study design support for health-related research projects. For information about biostatistical support click the title above.