Research Computing Services

Support and Consultation

We want to consult with you on any or all of these topics

Data analysis tools

WashU’s researchers have a wide variety of approaches, tools, and kinds of expertise. A&S research computing staff can complement, support, and help make connections and remove obstacles with a variety of tools and topics including R and RStudio, Jupyter Notebooks and Python, LabArchive, ATLAS.TI, General qualitative software analysis, and General data visualization

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Geospatial Applications

GIS can be used to study, analyze, and visualize any phenomenon that has a spatial component. If location plays a role in your research, GIS offers a way to include these spatial features in your analysis. Let us guide you to resources for learning and using ArcGIS or QGIS

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Research Computing Environment and Tools

Request Assistance with tools such as Docker, the RIS, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and more!

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Data Management and Manipulation

Gathering, organizing, and storing data are essential parts of the research process. We can help you find the tools you need, or find better ways of working with them. Ask us for help with web scraping, command-line tools and support, image processing, XML transformation and processing, data archiving, and more.

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Textual Data

Natural language data has its own characteristic challenges, from generating textual representations from images to extracting highly structured representations from the implicit structures of human language. Consult with us on natural language processing, optical character recognition (OCR), text analysis, topic modeling, and structural and analytic text markup.

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Get information about the Data Storage Platform

The Data Storage Platform is a scalable, high-performance and distributed storage infrastructure with integrated long-term archiving capabilities. There are a number of enterprise-level features to facilitate data analysis, management, curation and retention. All faculty involved in research have access to 5TB of free Active storage.

Learn about Data Storage and Data Transfer

Make a plan for your research data

While faculty Principal Investigators (PIs) are primarily responsibility for the maintenance and storage of their research data, A&S IT can help provide you with guidance on data storage solutions. Additionally, A&S IT staff can help in documenting, creating inventories, data dictionaries, metadata, or any other resources necessary to ensure your data is archived properly.

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Support for Software

Adobe products
Available as a subscription with the exception of Acrobat which can be purchased as a perpetual license.

ArcGIS
Used to study, analyze, and visualize virtually any phenomenon that has a spatial component. Free to all in the Washington University community. Visit Olin Library for more information about ArcGIS.

Atlas.TI
Computer assisted qualitative data analysis software.  Atlas.TI can be ordered from Cleverbridge Software, and licensing information can be found on their website.

BioCYC
Genome database collection. (https://biocyc.org).  Freely available to the Washington University community. Contact Frances Thuet (thuet@wustl.edu) for more information.

BioRender Premium
A web-based application of icons and templates designed to help scientists easily create, edit, store and share professional scientific figures. $200.00 annual pricing. 

ChemOffice Professional
A robust suite of scientifically intelligent chemistry productivity tools ensuring efficient design and visualization of molecules, reactions, biological entities and pathways for a deeper understanding of research outputs. Freely available to all in the Washington University community.  Request your lab account here: (https://becker.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/Chemdraw_install_instruction...)

COMPBIO
A biological knowledge generation platform designed and invented at the Genome Technology Access Center (GTAC) at WashU.  Web-based and free to all Washington University investigators and their labs. The site is only accessible from a WashU IP. (https://gtac-compbio.wustl.edu)

GraphPad Prism
Combines scientific graphing, comprehensive curve fitting (nonlinear regression), understandable statistics, and data organization. GraphPad Prism is available to the Washington University community for an annual license fee of $25.

JMP Genomics
A SAS-based integrated suite of tools for statistics that can be used to analyze rare and common variants, detect differential expression patterns, discover biomarker profiles, and incorporate pathway information into analysis workflows. Available to the Washington University community for free.

LabArchives
A cloud-based electronic lab notebook (ELN) that makes organizing, storing, and sharing lab data fast, simple and accessible on all digital platforms.  Available to everyone in the Washington University community at no cost.  Sign in at labarchives.com by selecting Washington University in St. Louis from the institution drop-down menu and logging in with your WUSTL Key username and password.

Lasergene
Lasergene Core Suite from DNASTAR is a comprehensive DNA and protein sequence analysis software suite comprised of several applications (SeqBuilder Pro, SeqMan Pro, SeqMan Ultra, MegAlign Pro, GeneQuest, Protean 3D, SeqNinja, and GenVision). With these applications you can edit sequences and create maps, assemble contigs, perform multiple and pairwise alignments, design primers, discover genes, analyze and visualize protein structure, perform automated virtual cloning, create publication-quality illustrations, and much more. Lasergene is available to the Washington University community for an initial license cost of $1,200 per lab.  After the initial license purchase, the yearly license fee is $550 per lab (charge starting from the second year). The Lasergene Core Suite license year runs from August to August, with licenses renewing automatically. License costs cannot be prorated.

Mathematica
A computer algebra system used in science, engineering, social sciences, and mathematical fields and includes thousands of built-in functions for computation, modeling, visualization, machine learning, development, and deployment.   

  • Mathematica pricing
    • Faculty/Staff $341.00 per computer.
    • Students (includes undergraduate, graduate, PhD):  $39.00 on a personal computer. 

MATLAB
An interactive numerical analysis statistical package that enables you to perform computationally intensive tasks faster than with traditional programming languages. Students may download the Mathworks Full Suite for free via a campus license. Faculty and staff must purchase the application.

Origin
Is used for data analysis and graphing. It offers an easy-to-use interface for beginners, combined with the ability to perform advanced customization as you become more familiar with the application.  The license is available through the Chemistry site license for a fee of $45. Contact Chris Thuet (cjthuet@wustl.edu) for more information.

Overleaf
Is a collaborative cloud-based LaTeX editor used for writing, editing and publishing scientific documents. A&S will offer to contribute 50% to the cost of a license. You must sign up to receive this offer during the open enrollment period.

Oxygen XML Editor
A robust desktop editor for authoring, editing, validating, and transforming XML documents. It has built-in support for many common XML document schemas. The library purchases a campus-wide license that covers faculty, students, and staff throughout the university.

PyMOL
A popular molecular visualization application, used to examine molecular coordinates and render publication-quality pictures of proteins and small molecules. PyMOL runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. PyMOL is available to the Washington University Community for an annual fee of $80 per lab. 

R
A programming language for statistical computing with thousands of add-on packages. (freely available)

RStudio
An integrated development environment (IDE) for R. It includes a console, syntax-highlighting editor that supports direct code execution, as well as tools for plotting, history, debugging and workspace management.  Download open source RStudio Desktop for free via the RStudio website

SAS
statistical analysis software

  • SAS pricing:
    • Faculty/Staff - $183.00 yearly.
    • Students (Undergraduate, Graduate, PhD) - No charge for SAS Pkg for personal computer/classwork only. To access the Student download, click  Student Download.

SigmaPlot
SigmaPlot offers full range of graphing options: technical axis, scales, multiple axes, multiple intersecting 3D graphs, and much more.

  • Faculty/Staff $137.00 per computer yearly.

SnapGene
Is molecular biology software that allows you to easily plan and simulate your DNA manipulations, visualize ORFs, reading frames, and primer binding sites, automatically record steps in a cloning project, and share annotated sequence files with other researchers. SnapGene is available to the Washington University community for an annual license price of $100 per computer. 

SPSS - offers the full scope of statistical and analytical capabilities. It is an easy-to-use, comprehensive software solution that addresses the entire analysis process from planning and data preparation to analysis, reporting and deployment. 

  • SPSS Pricing:
    • Faculty/Staff $140.00 per computer: single standalone device or concurrent seats on a network license.
    • Students (Undergraduate, Graduate, PhD) - No charge for IBM SPSS for personal computer/classwork only. 

Stata
Stata is a complete, fully integrated statistical package.  We can purchase Stata through their ProfPlan. 

Resources

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