The Research Team within LSA Technology Services is excited to announce virtual office hours for research computing support. These are regularly scheduled times when we will have subject matter experts in geographic information systems, high performance computing, digital scholarship, and computer programming available for drop-in support. Faculty, staff, and students with research-related questions pertaining to any of these areas can stop by to ask questions, get help working through a problem, or inquire about a new project—no appointment necessary!

Not sure what we can do to help? Read on for more details about the services provided by each of these teams.

Digital Scholarship
Our digital scholarship team specializes in humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary digital project methods and can provide assistance with:
* Conceptualizing, planning, and finding resources for a digital project
* How to version, archive, and preserve a project
* Sustainability, preservation, accessibility, privacy, consent, or grant requirements
New to digital projects? We can also talk about how to demonstrate the scholarly rigor of your digital project, accurately credit the labor required of the project at every stage, and how to provide evidence and metrics for promotion and job dossiers.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Our GIS specialists can help with your geographic data needs, including the following:
* Making maps for use in a class, grant proposal, or publication
* Geospatial analysis: identifying spatial patterns and trends in your data
* Georeferencing: assigning geographic coordinates to a historic paper map or a hand-drawn sketch for digital use as a basemap or combined display with other data
* Geocoding: convert a spreadsheet with addresses into latitude-longitude so you can plot your data on a map
* StoryMaps: harness the power of maps to tell your story
* Integrating smartphones or tablets and GIS in your field courses or researchSetting up workshops for a class or group interested in learning to use GIS in the context of your discipline
* Assistance with ESRI's ArcGIS platform, including ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online, or other geospatial software
* Developing your own custom GIS web application or mobile application

High Performance Computing (HPC)

Our HPC team can help with:
* Accessing U-M’s new Great Lakes HPC (High Performance Computing) cluster
* Moving your computational work from your laptop or workstation to the cluster, freeing up your machines for other tasks
* Compiling, installing, or configuring a wide range of computational software
* Setting up automated workflows to save time
* Debugging your programs to see why they are crashing
* Evaluating the benefits of parallel computing, more memory or system resources for your code
We regularly support Python, R, MATLAB, C/C++, Java, Julia, Go, and many other applications.

Research Support Programming

Our computer programming team can help with any of the following:

* Debugging, repair, and improvements or upgrades to your existing code
* References to training and coding resources to assist in your project
* Design and development of custom software to support your research
* Incorporation of lab-specific hardware into custom software applications.
* Writing funding for any of the above into your grant proposals
We're experienced in MATLAB, Python, R, LabVIEW, JavaScript, MedPC, iOS development, and more.

Who can join the office hours?
LSA Faculty, staff, and students with research-related questions on geographic information systems, high performance computing, digital scholarship, and computer programming

When and where is it?
Our virtual office hours use Zoom:
Mondays, 2:00–3:00 P.M.
Tuesdays, 10:00–11:00 A.M.
Thursdays, 3:00–4:00 P.M.

Further details: https://lsa.umich.edu/technology-services/services/research-tools/office-hours.html