UCL Services and Support

Various teams work together to provide services and infrastructure which support the UCL community who perform research using data, software and compute.

Skip to: research software, research data, research compute, equipment, clinical infrastructure, community

Support for researchers

Research IT & data management drop-in sessions are for all research staff and research students. There'll be representatives from all of the RITS service areas. Sign up to the RITS mailing list for details.
RITS and ITforSLMS facilitators can advise researchers on what service and facilities would be appropreate to use (contact: itforslms.research@ucl.ac.uk or RITS)
ISD Digital Skills Development team provides help with digital skills to all UCL staff and students at weekly drop in sessions during term-time. This includes areas such as data analysis, Office 365, programming, desktop applications, and more.
Join one of UCL's coding communities

Research Software

Research Software Development Group (RITS): Provides expertise in creating software for academic research, and collaborating with researchers across UCL on projects requiring these skills. Their goal is to enhance UCL's capacity to produce high quality scientific software, from the simplest scripts to complex simulations running on state-of-the-art supercomputers.
AI Studio (RITS):helps the scientific community across UCL by providing consultancy and software development for data science and machine learning projects
RITS Software Tools
Managing research outputs how-to-guide: Software sustainability, preservation and sharing
Portico Ventures (UCL Business) supports academics creating non-patentable intellectual property such as software, know-how, algorithmic methods.
XIP (UCL Business) is an express licensing portal providing industry and academia with easy access to software and materials developed by UCL's researchers.

Research Data

Support and advice can be provided at all stages of the research lifecycle from inception, through data applications, research and retention from:

Planning Data Management (Library Services): Advice, tools and information on funders' expectations , what to include in a Data Management Plan and how to cost it.
Research Data Storage Service (RITS): a large scale facility for storing research data whilst your project is ongoing.
Research Data Repository (RITS and Library Services): this facility can preserve your research data of value long-term and make it available to others.
Medcial Image Data at UCL Service
UCL Digital Collections (Library Services) is home to the Library's digitised materials and research data. You can search the collections, or browse an overview of all our holdings. The service can also offer support for researchers looking for a method of disseminating research data, or long-term preservation.
Information Governance (IG) Advisory Service (ITforSLMS): training and promotion of IG compliance for managing personal data. Supports researchers who need suitable assurance processes for their data providers e.g. NHS Digital.
Data Safe Haven Assurance (ITforSLMS): Information Governance assurance process before on-boarding to the UCL Data Safe Haven
Research Data Protection (UCL Legal): Practical guidance on handling personal data and special categories personal data in accordance with legislation
Research Integrity (OVPR): UCL guidelines, policies and training regarding research integrity and ethic

Research Compute

UCL Research Computing (RITS): Supports computationally intensive research at UCL through provision of specialist platforms for high performance (Grace, Kathleen) and high throughput computing (Myriad). RITS also provides Tier 2 HPC services the UK Materials and Molecular Modelling research community (Thomas) and the Faraday Institute (Michael).
Joint Academic Data Science Endeavour (JADE) is a Tier 2 GPU cluster. It the largest GPU facility in the UK supporting world-leading research in machine learning. UCL is a consortium member and support to access this facility is via RITS.
Data Safe Haven (ISD): provides the technical solution for storing, handling and analysing identifiable data.
IHI and IOE Saferooms: enables remote analysis on sensitive data held in national repositories e.g. UK Data Service.
Jill Dando Institute Research Laboratory (Crime Science): state-of-the-art secure computer facility, which is a Police Assured Secure Facility for the storage and analysis of data.
MRC eMedLab (ItforSLMS): is a shared computer cluster which integrates and shares heterogeneous data from personal healthcare records, imaging, pharmacoinformatics and genomics.

Equipment

UKRI Infrastructure Portal: contains information on hundreds of research and innovation infrastructures available to UK researchers and innovators. These include major equipment, resources such as collections, archives or scientific data, e-infrastructures such as data and computing systems, and communication networks.
UCL Research Equipment Catalogue (Research & Innovation Services): a searchable database containing information on all UCL’s major research equipment and facilities.
Science and Technology Platforms (LMS RCO): aim to provide an integrated network of world-class science and technology platforms to ensure researchers have timely access to equipment, resources and expertise necessary to undertake world-leading research.
Costing and Recharging UCL’s Research Facilities (Research & Innovation Services)

NIHR Biomedical Research Centres

UCLH Clinical and Research Informatics Unit (CRIU) consists of a team of clinicians, researchers, software developers, business intelligence analysts and data scientists working together to develop a robust environment and infrastructure for the analysis of clinical data.
Great Ormond Street Hospital's Digital Research, Informatics and Virtual Environments (DRIVE) Unit uses data and technology to improve clinical care and patient experience. The Digital Research Environment (DRE) provides the technological infrastructure to facilitate research undertaken at GOSH.