Welcome

Before you decide on either purchasing or transferring equipment, you may be interested in knowing what services exist for free or at a subsidized cost here at Illinois – including research computing, storage, and various collaboration tools.

Collaboration Tools

Illinois has a campus license with Microsoft for the use of their full suite of Office 365 products including Outlook, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. Teams can be useful for creating real-time chat spaces for your research group and other collaborators. Skype for Business is the campus phone system, but it can also be used to host online meetings and one-to-one chats. We also have access to Zoom. Affiliation with the Grainger College of Engineering entitles you to a Zoom Pro license which allows you to host a meeting with up to 300 real-time participants. Each of these services requires your Illinois NetID, so be sure to ask your IT Professional about them when you arrive on campus. 

Illinois Campus Cluster

The Illinois Campus Cluster program is a shared High-Performance Computing environment that many researchers find useful. The Grainger College of Engineering investment in this resource is available for both research and instructional purposes (currently totalling 832 CPU cores and 46 A10 GPUs). Additionally, Illinois has a 4,300-core High-Throughput Computing resource available based on HT Condor. Both of these resources can be used at zero cost to you. A comparison chart of computing resources can be found here.

Cloud Storage

The University of Illinois has agreements with Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive for cloud storage solutions. There are some constraints on file sizes as well as considerations for certain operating systems versus others, but these cloud solutions may be appropriate for some use cases. Key distinctions can be seen in our storage service comparison chart.

Engineering IT offers a range of services that are designed to help support your research in a variety of ways. We have created a checklist for researchers that is intended to help ensure the most common components of your project are addressed.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about support for your research, please email our Research Technology Facilitator at engrit-help@illinois.edu.

Transferring Research Projects to Illinois

For the most current information on how to transfer your research project to Illinois, please contact the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.

If you are intending to transfer a research project involving human subjects, your current institution’s IRB approval may need to be transferred to Illinois. The Office for the Protection of Research Subjects should be able to assist you. 

Transferring Data to Illinois

Depending on the type of data you have or the data sharing agreements you have with your funding agency and your project collaborators, some data may be more appropriately stored in one location versus another. Examples of this type of storage consideration would involve Personal Health Information or data protected by Export Control/ITAR restrictions.

A comparison of many of our storage solutions on campus can be found here.

For further information on general data types, please visit our campus security team’s Data Classification Overview.

Transferring Equipment to Illinois

In many cases, equipment purchased on a grant is the property of the institution that was awarded the grant – not an individual.

The University of Illinois has policies about equipment being transferred to other institutions which you can find here - specifically section 12.3.4 has the most relevant information on that topic, but this information is focused on equipment purchased for use at Illinois...NOT equipment that will be transferred TO Illinois from another institution.

Your current institution will likely have similar policies and you will need to work with your home department at Illinois to determine a process for transferring this type of equipment. 

In addition to the many common services used by everyone at Illinois, there are a few services you might find useful as an instructor. For a brief introduction to the tools available to you and on how you can prepare for your courses, please have a look at our instructor checklist.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about support for teaching your courses, please email our Instructional Technology Facilitator at engrit-help@illinois.edu.

Engineering WorkStation (EWS) Labs

Engineering IT operates a number of labs across the college – some with general software suites, and some with departmentally specific software. In total, there are over 1,500 workstations available for your students. In addition to our physical computer labs, Engineering IT operates a remotely accessible EWS Windows environment via Citrix and a virtual Linux environment using FastX. If you have specific software requirements for your course, email ews@illinois.edu and let us know what you need.

Lecture Capture Services

Depending on the room assigned to your course, there may be an opportunity to have your lectures automatically recorded so that students can reference the material later or catch up on a topic they may have missed. There are also software-based lecture recording options available to create content outside of the classroom. Email engrit-help@illinois.edu to learn more about the available lecture capture options and to schedule recordings for your classroom space.

Computer-Based Testing Facility (CBTF)

If you plan to have computer-based exams for your course, the college operates a proctored computer-based testing facility (CBTF) to support computerized exams at scale. Email our technology facilitators at engrit-help@illinois.edu to determine if the CBTF is a good fit for your course assessments.

Engineering and General Assignment Classrooms

Not all Engineering courses are taught in buildings supported by Engineering IT. If you expect to teach as soon as you arrive on campus, you may find it helpful to know the location and technical capabilities of your assigned classroom. This link contains current details on most classrooms on campus. If you have a question about a specific room, feel free to email engrit-help@illinois.edu and we’ll work to get you an answer.