CREATE

King's Computational Research, Engineering And Technology Environment (CREATE) provides all King's researchers with the building blocks to innovate in a flexible and secure environment with access to the latest hardware and software.

CREATE provides services for high performance computing (inc. AI capable GPU nodes), private cloud computing (OpenStack), Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and web hosting. CREATE currently hosts projects of all sizes across the full breadth of King's research activity: from AI applied to multi-modal healthcare data to social media mining for humanities research. To get access and learn more about the service visit our docs pages.

Trusted Research Environment

The CREATE Trusted Research Environment (TRE) offers a secure, flexible platform for accessing and analysing sensitive data. It supports Linux and Windows desktops, HPC, and GPU environments, and can be tailored to meet a range of research and governance needs.

To support planning and management, we’ve developed tools like the Data Risk Model (to assess data sensitivity) and the TRE Cost Calculator (to estimate deployment costs).

This approach has already supported NHS-affiliated and academic research projects, helping researchers work responsibly with sensitive data.

The TRE operates under strict information security controls and is ISO 27001 Certified, ensuring best practices in data protection.

Research Software Engineering

The Research Software Engineering (RSE) function within e-Research supports the development of research software at KCL and its partner institutions. We achieve this through: direct collaboration with researchers; embedding experienced Research Software Engineers within new and existing research project teams; helping to up-skill researchers through our computational skills training; and providing short-term consultancy to those looking for advice on specific questions relating to their research software.

Research Data Storage

The e-Research Research Data Storage (RDS) platform has been implemented to enable KCL researchers to safely secure their bulk and voluminous research data. RDS is designed to host petabytes of research data and manage vast scientific data from a wide range of different disciplines.

RDS stores and presents users' data in a standard manner using a network file system which can be mounted on users' own devices.

RDS is designed to prevent research groups from having to purchase and manage their own storage (such as local network array storage devices) and is designed to be interfaced with scientific instrumentation. This enables high data volumes generated on the devices to be quickly copied or moved onto RDS where they can be stored safely.

Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a tool for building and conducting surveys of research cohorts. It has been used for a range of subjects including research into the effects of long covid and eating disorders. Providing sufficient design and testing has been carried out it is suitable to use for collecting Personal and Identifiable Information (PII) and data considered special categories of personal data (as defined by the UK GDPR and explained by the ICO).

For creating basic surveys with regular question types, the experience of using Qualtrics is probably very similar to that of using MS Forms with more advanced features such as the ability to randomise questions, create blocks of questions, and use piped text.

For more information, please email support@er.kcl.ac.uk