Procure Hardware and Design Digital Infrastructure
Consult with Faculty IT support units on digital research hardware sourcing, purchasing, and setup. They should always be involved in large-scale digital infrastructure design and funding applications, especially those that include funding for large-scale digital infrastructure.
Consult with Faculty IT units as soon as possible to ensure they have sufficient time to provide support.
AskResearch
Email: askresearch@mcmaster.ca
AskResearch is here to support you as a researcher. If you can’t find what you’re looking for or aren't sure where to start, contact us!
Faculty Research Support
Faculties offer different services to support research. To see what services are available, connect with your Faculty’s IT support unit or Faculty research support.
- Faculty of Business: DeGroote School of Business ITS
- Faculty of Humanities: Humanities Media & Computing
- Faculty of Health Sciences: Computer Services Unit
- Faculty of Science: Scitech
- Faculty of Social Sciences: Social Sciences Technology SharePoint (access only available to Faculty of Social Science staff and faculty)
To receive timely support, engage with support services early in the research planning process and maintain communication throughout your projects. Staff and students should also discuss their digital research support roles and responsibilities with their research team and supervisor.
Source Hardware and Design Digital Infrastructure
Existing research and digital infrastructure may satisfy some of your needs and may inform hardware purchases and research infrastructure design.
- AskResearch can help coordinate consultations across these groups and can refer to additional specialized supports as needed.
Core Research Platforms
- McMaster’s Core Research Platforms enable access to a wide range of advanced research instruments. Core Research Platforms provide all McMaster researchers fee-for-service access to infrastructure, services, and expertise needed to advance the University’s research mission and provide opportunities to extend the breadth of their research programs and integrate this research across disciplines.
Research Centres and Institutes
- McMaster’s Research Centres and Institutes bring researchers together to solve complex problems and may provide additional domain-specific research infrastructure to affiliated researchers.
- Research and High-Performance Computing Support (RHPCS) can consult on hardware purchasing and laboratory and research infrastructure design on a cost-recovery basis, contingent upon capacity.
- Research Security can consult on compliance of research security policy and guidelines, geopolitical risk considerations and support in due diligence of vendors and contractors.
- Information Security for Researchers provides research support in terms of Information Security. Some examples are: network diagrams for secure labs & offices, information on network segmentation, and remote access technologies. Information Security for Researchers can consult on information security relevant to software and hardware purchasing and digital infrastructure design.
- Research Data Management (RDM) Services can consult on infrastructure design as it pertains to data storage, backup, encryption, transfer, and other data management needs.
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Research Software Development (RSD) can consult on and support software components of infrastructure projects.
McMaster Ethics Boards
- In some cases, ethics review boards should be consulted early in the design process.
Additional Support
Faculties, departments, research groups, and other units may provide access to additional research infrastructure.
University Technology Services (UTS) is McMaster’s central IT department, providing general IT services. McMaster University Library (MUL) and Health Science Library (HSL) and many other groups at McMaster also enable access to digital infrastructure relevant to research.
Researchers may also have access to research and digital infrastructure external to McMaster, including high-performance computing and advanced research computing resources.
Fund Hardware and Digital Infrastructure for your Research
Faculty receive an annual professional development allowance that may be used for research hardware and devices.
Faculties, departments, and research groups may provide additional funding for research hardware and devices.
Funding for research hardware and digital infrastructure will most often come from funding competitions.
Digital research infrastructure funding competitions
Notable funding competitions for digital infrastructure for research include:
Research Office for Administration, Development and Support (ROADS) helps researchers from all faculties find and secure external non-industry funding to support their research activities. ROADS helps researchers identify funding opportunities, review and edit grant submissions, operationalize awarded projects, ensure compliance with agency and institutional policy, and more.
McMaster Industry Liaison Office (MILO) helps researchers from all faculties find industry-sponsored funding to support their partnered research activities. MILO can help researchers identify and review applications for eligible industry-matching grant programs as well as commercialization funding programs. MILO also negotiates all industry-sponsored research agreements and all research contracts performed by the university.
Health Research Services (HRS) is the primary contact for researchers from the Faculty of Health Sciences seeking external non-industry funding to support their research activities. HRS can help researchers find funding sources and complete grant applications, facilitate account setup to access funding, and ensure compliance with all University and agency policy and guidelines.
Feedback
The Digital Research Kickstarter is a living document that will be refined as we gather more information from users. We encourage and welcome any feedback. Please submit your feedback below or by emailing AskResearch.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
