Part of the recent Wharton High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) upgrade was augmentation with Amazon EC2 cloud resources. Wharton Research Computing recently piloted the deployment of a cloud-bursting solution with Univa UniCloud. After much help from friendly initial users, we have worked out most of the kinks. Now, we have a…Read More
How to capture MTurk workers’ IDs into your Qualtrics survey
When posting a Qualtrics survey link on MTurk, here’s how to capture a worker ID as embedded data: First, create a HIT (Human Intelligence Task) normally, selecting the Survey Link template type. Continue setting up your hit normally until you arrive at the Design Layout tab, then click the Source button and replace…Read More
HPCC: Taking WC from Local to Cloud Computing
These are exciting times here at Wharton Research Computing! Last semester, we announced the planned upgrade from the now-retired Wharton Grid to the new Wharton High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC). Almost 700 git commits and 14,000 lines of code later, we are in full swing – with two new chassis loaded…Read More
Qualtrics Loop & Merge Tips
The Qualtrics Loop & Merge utility is a powerful tool and offers great flexibility when dealing with dynamic content in a survey. I want to show off some use cases ranging from very simple to advanced, which you can adapt for use in research. Simple looping Let’s say you want to implement a…Read More
Towards Research IT Support as a Service
Our team’s overarching strategic goal is to create a set of centralized and scaleable research-related IT services in order to attract and retain top quality researchers. Sounds simple, right? However at Wharton (and perhaps Penn), it turns out that teaching is much more efficiently and centrally served than research is (at least…Read More
Wharton HPCC Hardware Has Arrived
Wharton Research Computing is excited to announce that our new High-Performance Computing Cluster is here! This hardware refresh is now in the process of being brought online. Wharton researchers can look forward to two terabytes of working memory and 512 of the fastest currently available CPU cores. This platform will…Read More
Want to work with us?
Part-time contract opportunities available to assist with ongoing research projects at Wharton. These projects typically include some custom programming to answer the research question and will often involve working with web scrapers and Qualtrics. Each project is independent and you will have the opportunity to work directly with the Faculty…Read More
MobaXterm: SSH, Graphics (X), VNC, SFTP, local shell
I’m primarily a Microsoft OS user, and have been for many years — since the mid-90’s! While OSX and Linux have come a long way, they still don’t fit my business style as well as Windows does. Yet. But I’m also a power Linux user, and spend a lot of…Read More
Notes from the ARCC14 Workshop
One of the perks of my job is that it lands me at some really interesting conferences related to computing infrastructure. Most recently, I attended Advancing Research Computing on Campuses (ARCC): Best Practices Workshop – where I took notes, so you didn’t have to! Held on the University of Illinois campus…Read More
MCMC in The Cloud
Arun Gopalakrishnan, a doctoral candidate in Wharton’s Marketing department, recently approached me to discuss taking his MCMC simulations in R to the next level: Big. His paper is under review at a journal, and the referees asked for more. Much more. While he sharpened his code, Wharton Computing’s Research Computing team built,…Read More