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Case Study

Ensuring Research Continuity for Incoming Faculty

About the Research

Ensuring Research Continuity for Incoming Faculty

Elisa Jácome is an assistant professor of economics in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and she studies public finance and labor economics. Her research focuses on domestic policy issues, especially those related to immigration, healthcare, and the criminal justice system. 

Research Challenge

Jácome works with large administrative datasets that can contain sensitive information, such as health and education records. Use of these datasets is governed by a data-use agreement that requires her data be stored on an encrypted university system. In addition to secure storage, Jácome’s research also requires a secure computational environment that can handle analysis of these large datasets. 

When she joined Northwestern from Princeton University as a new faculty member, Jácome reached out to Northwestern IT’s Research Computing and Data Services (RCDS) team with the challenge of securely transferring her data and research workflow.  

Solution

At Princeton, Jácome was using a virtual machine to work with her data, and she was looking for a similar solution at Northwestern. Compared to purchasing a physical server, virtual machines reduce the system administration requirements for researchers. RCDS partnered with Northwestern IT's Cyberinfrastructure group to review her previous virtual machine, configure a custom machine at Northwestern, and ensure she was comfortable using the new system. 

RCDS also managed the data transfer from Princeton to Northwestern’s Research Data Storage Service (RDSS), ensuring the transfer was completed securely and in compliance with her data-use agreement. 

The work RCDS did to set up my new research infrastructure is invaluable. It created workflow efficiency and peace of mind for me.”

Elisa Jácome
Associate Professor of Economics
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Impact

Jácome and her team can now easily access the data and have peace of mind that the data is being well protected. She has stated that she loves the new system set up and that the improvements RCDS proposed have made her research process much smoother.  

Additional Details