The goal of the newly reconfigured CIT Core under this P2C award is to support innovative population research. The CIT Core provides a computing and information technology infrastructure that is stable, secure, and state-of-the-art and that adapts to the evolving needs of PSC Research Associates and their quest to create new knowledge and to solve real world problems in population health, demography, and the population sciences. The CIT Core works with PSC Research Associates to implement and develop efficient protocols that address the requirements of externally funded research and that facilitate collaboration and communication among research networks, including data collection and sharing of secure data. We will also use the CIT Core to harness the project-specific innovations underway in the PSC to create a wider understanding of their meaning and the potential application of ?big data.? The responsibility of management of computing within the PSC, including hiring, planning and coordination of services, is jointly shared with Social Sciences Computing (SSC), a division of SAS Computing (SASC). The PSC has thus been able to take advantage of SASC's expertise and experience in designing and maintaining computing systems. It has proven a cost-effective way for the PSC to concentrate resources in the implementation of cutting-edge initiatives for population research requiring specialized hardware, software, or human capital that go beyond the general services provided by SSC. The key services above and beyond the human capital are: (1) management and maintenance of statistical servers; (2) availability of adaptable multi-node high-performance computing clusters; (3) support for desktop computing; (4) secure data management and compliance; (5) storage and backup; (6) enabling networking and collaboration for various types of research projects; (7) making available services that enhance the ability of researchers to communicate and collaborate across space and time; and (8) support for data collection, secure data sharing, and for new ?big data? endeavors.
At Penn, PSC researchers remain in the vanguard in the social sciences with respect to computing intensity and incorporation of new technologies and methodologies. The CIT Core works with Penn's SSC to direct the evolution of the computing environment in close integration with the changing nature and demands of PSC research activities. Integration with SSC allows the PSC to provide high-end services to individual projects at the same time that it provides an enhanced infrastructure available to all PSC researchers.
