Proposal Consultation

Our team of experts in hardware and software can meet with you during proposal development to:

• Identify what the study hardware, software, programing and system supports needs will be
• Determine what resources are currently available on campus to meet your study needs and the possible costs associated with their use
• Provide hardware and software specifications, technology and personnel costs to include in your grant
• If there are IT recommendations made peer review, our study team can meet with you to plan your responses for your resubmission

Letters of Support

The Research Computing and Informatics Group is pleased to offer letters of support for your grant applications, outlining our services and commitment to supporting your study if funded.

To request a letter, please reach out to David Cyrille at David.Cyrille@stonybrook.edu at least one month before the grant submission deadline. This timeframe allows us to meet with you, understand your study’s specific IT needs, and provide a robust letter of support. With the initial email request, please provide the following:

• A draft of the study abstract; 2- a draft of the letter of support that includes any services/requests you are making for IT to provide if the grant is funded;
• A summary of any IT specific budget requests (e.g. hardware, software, personnel) that will be included in the grant application’s budget

Grant Review

For studies recommended for funding, at the time of Just-in-time (JIT) documents request, our team can help to review your Data Management and Sharing Plan to help with:

• Summarizing the types and estimate the amount of scientific data expected to be generated in the project
• Identifying the most appropriate data repository(s) for your data
• Developing and describing your data archiving plan for raw and final data

Onboarding of New Grants

At study start-up, our team can help:

• Provide you with technical specifications and cost estimates for new hardware and software and work with vendors to ensure the best academic pricing
• Guide you to the best university storage sites based upon your study needs and data types

DMPTool is a self-service tool that assists with creating Data Management Plans (DMPs), which are required in most grant proposal submissions to research funding agencies (e.g., NIH, NSF, DoD).

Box is a web-based tool, offering file storage, sharing, and document collaboration. Available at no cost to individual faculty, staff, and departments, it also supports the storage of high-risk or potentially sensitive data. With Stony Brook Box, you can:

• Access your account from anywhere, at any time, and on any device with an internet connection.

• Share documents and folders both within the Stony Brook University community (SBU and SBMed) and with external collaborators.  
• Collaborate effectively by adding comments, assigning tasks, and co-creating documents.

Some of the top features of Stony Brook Box include:

• Unlimited cloud storage  
• Upload large files up to 150 GB  
• Sign on using UHMC or Stony Brook University NetID credentials
• Share and collaborate with other Box users, both within the Stony Brook University community (SBU and SBMed) and with external collaborators.
• Send large files via Box
• Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
• Version control at the document level
• File encryption at Box and across the network
• Sync files across devices
• Full text search within documents
• Assign tasks and due dates to files
• Set access permission at the document and folder levels
• Access and upload files from mobile devices

Test Newsletter 6/28/24

This service assists investigators with reviewing de-identified or limited datasets that they would like to share with external parties, such as outside collaborators or public repositories to ensure compliance with regulations and best practices.

Once we have reviewed the dataset, we can confirm the extent to which the data can be shared or suggest corrections.

Florence eBinders allows research teams to digitize all regulatory study binder documentation and workflows. Launched in our Cancer Center in 2022, it can be used by study teams for federally-funded or investigator-initiated studies for free, or on industry-funded trials for a fee. This platform allows for remote access for external personnel for study activities relating to trial start-up, monitoring, and source data review for your sponsors.

The Stony Brook Research Ripple Registry and the Stony Brook Autism Research Volunteer Registry are available for researchers for the purposes of study recruitment.

Ripple Study Recruitment is a HIPAA-compliant, web-based solution aimed at enhancing the recruitment and retention of participants in clinical trials and research studies. It helps streamline the entire recruitment process through features such as campaign creation, logging contacts, participant screening, and tracking enrollment metrics, all from one centralized online platform. This enables research teams to more efficiently recruit, enroll, track, and manage study participants, ultimately improving the rates of participant recruitment and retention in clinical and research projects. Stony Brook has deployed two specialized registries, including a General Registry and an Autism Research Volunteer Registry, to support researchers in their study recruitment efforts.

OnCore is a Clinical Trial Management System. It is primarily used to track clinical trials and participant accruals, with features such as subject trial calendars, billing, SAE and deviations documentation, and IRB status.

Integrated and transformed Stony Brook Medicine healthcare data are made available for research access with restrictions.

Virtual Machines (VMs) for Clinical Research offer a dedicated environment for researchers to prototype code and applications that cannot run on High Performance Computing (HPC). These VMs provide the flexibility to scale according to your needs and are backed by a specialized team within the Research Computing Systems Engineering group, ensuring comprehensive support. For cost efficiency, the hosted research VMs are run on-premises, with both Linux and Windows servers available.

Benefits:

• Highly available
• Scalable
• Backup options available upon request
• Managed and supported by systems administrators
• Customizable

The VMs are hosted on a dedicated, highly available cluster utilizing VMware technologies. They are backed up and can be configured with various levels of reporting and monitoring to ensure uptime and reliability. The Research Computing Systems Engineering group handles core operating system maintenance, including critical security updates, allowing researchers to focus solely on their research rather than system administration.

These VMs can be customized to meet specific research needs with a wide range of applications and tools. They offer a practical alternative to physical research workstations, which can occupy space and become outdated quickly. VMs also provide more flexibility; for instance, increasing memory or CPU can be done without rebooting, and storage upgrades are seamless, saving valuable research time with minimal risk of data loss.