Office of Research Strategy and Development
The Office of Research Strategy and Development provides catalytic and strategic support for the School’s research efforts and provides resources to maintain the highest research standards.
90 Smith Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 300, Boston, MA 02120
Research Platforms
Access information on research resources available to Harvard Chan School investigators.
Research resources at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health help investigators generate new knowledge and insights that drive advancements in the field. A variety of tools and services enable investigators and their research teams to conduct rigorous studies, analyze data effectively, and produce evidence-based findings. Resources are available at the department, School, and University levels. Please contact ORSD to check if a needed resource is available within the Harvard ecosystem.
Research computing is an important resource across all public health disciplines. Research computing resources supported by the Harvard Chan School includes access to cloud and on-premises high-performance computing environments, secure data enclaves, and expert guidance for preserving data safety and security.
The School supports faculty use of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Research Computing (FASRC) high-performance cluster called “Cannon.” Computational resources are available for high performance and scientific computing, bioinformatic analysis, visualization, and data storage. The School has made investments in the cluster for a priority partition for School users including GPU resources.
Cloud environments provide a powerful and flexible computing option for many researchers. Several cloud computing options are available to School investigators through University-negotiated and managed solutions.
University Research Computing and Data Services manages a computing, storage, and database environment for researchers working with highly regulated data – data bound by federal, state, local laws and other contractual obligations – to be maintained at a level that ensures privacy and security are at federally recognized standards such as NIST 800-53.
Investigators have access to a variety of research programs and tools for facilitating biomedical research. Accessible through various University sources the research software available may be free, discounted, or full price with more favorable Harvard-negotiated terms.
The Harvard Chan School has a number of biomedical and computational core facilities available to our research community. Fee-for-service core facilities, also called service centers, provide specialized equipment, expertise, or services that may be too expensive for individual labs to acquire or maintain. Core facilities are also available to School faculty at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the affiliated hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area.
Improving access to datasets is a process under development at the Harvard Chan School.
One mechanism has been through the purchase of an institutional subscription to the Boston Research Data Center (BRDC), a secure computing lab which provides secure, on-premises access for statistical analyses on non-public microdata from 16 federal agencies. Efforts are underway to enhance the visibility and accessibility of datasets hosted at the Harvard Chan School. This includes supporting the development of broadly written Data Use Agreements (DUA) to facilitate increased sharing of external datasets and improving visibility of datasets developed by Harvard Chan School investigators for wider use.