Sci-Tech Core-Maryland Population Research Center

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The Scientific and Technical Core (STC) aims to provide MPRC associates with the computational resources and technical support necessary to conduct cutting-edge population research. The STC is designed to deliver services to faculty that are not offered by their individual units on campus, including access to secure data enclaves for restricted and confidential datasets, hosting web sites for data dissemination and archiving, and offering training and consultation services in statistical programming and data management. Through its computer lab, the STC provides access to specialized software that may not be available to researchers in their academic departments. The core also offers a platform on which to run computationally-intensive jobs. The STC facilitates collaboration by allowing faculty associates and external affiliates to share large datasets through a secure storage area network. In the next grant cycle, the STC anticipates expanding its support for the use of restricted datasets for which it maintains two secure data enclaves and provides remote secure-data computing and secure data storage services. The STC will also play a critical role in promoting the use of the recently-established Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) at the University of Maryland. The FSRDC is one of the most exciting university-wide initiatives that gives researchers access to highly-restricted social, demographic and health-related data sources, including datasets linking individuals to administrative records. The STC will play a key role in disseminating information about the data available at the FSRDC through three planned conferences over the next five years, and by assisting researchers in their application for access to the restricted data. MPRC staff will also provide formal and informal programming support to faculty associates interested in using the FSRDC. To evaluate its effectiveness in meeting faculty demands in the next grant cycle, the STC will collect detailed information on usage of its services, and conduct surveys of all associates every two years. The STC is directed by Andres Villarreal (Sociology), a social demographer with extensive knowledge of statistical and computational methods.