Description
UCSF's Research Analysis Environment (RAE) is a secure data hosting and compute service for UCSF researchers and their internal or external collaborators.
Formerly known as MyResearch, RAE provides compute, storage, and tools in a secure, compliant platform across three product tiers to meet the community's diverse research needs.
- RAE Free: Shared compute, storage, and tools to meet most research needs.
- RAE Premium: Dedicated compute and storage for study-specific large datasets.
- RAE Cloud: Access to secure AWS resources for compute and storage.
RAE provides research teams with a professionally managed, secure, collaborative environment in which to manage files containing sensitive data. RAE also provides remote desktop capability with applications that allow investigators to view, manipulate, and save their data entirely in a protected environment without requiring files to be stored on their own computers.
RAE is available to all UCSF students, faculty, staff, and any non-UCSF collaborators who are sponsored by a member of our community. Researchers log into RAE using their UCSF login and Duo multi-factor authentication.
Use cases
| RAE Free |
- Smaller studies
- Performance around a desktop
- Collaborative
- Meets most researchers’ needs
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| RAE Premium |
- High performance
- Dedicated non-shared environment for your study
- Expandable compute
- Consultation around configurations
- Larger and increased performance storage
- Windows
- Customized software installs - support for your software
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| RAE Cloud |
- Shorter term projects
- Ability to quickly scale up and down
- Faster provisioning
- Windows or Ubuntu
- Machine learning
- Customized software installs - support for your software
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Features
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Free |
Premium |
Cloud |
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| Office and Publication Applications |
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| Statistics and Data Analysis Tools |
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| Programming and Development Environments |
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| GIS Tools |
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Sensitive Data Marts
(e.g. cTAKES, CDW, LDS, CORDS) |
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| Amazon Web Services |
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| Cost |
Free |
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| Performance |
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| Storage |
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RAE-supported Tools and Applications
Note: Applications such as SAS or Excel run on the RAE servers in a secure data center, but they appear on the user’s own screen as if they were running locally on the user’s computer.
| Programming, File System, and Development |
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| File Explorer |
File manager that allows access to preview, sort, and modify files and folders stored in RAE |
| Matlab |
High-level language and interactive environment |
| Notepad++ |
Free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages |
| Spyder |
IDE for the Python language with advanced editing, testing, debugging, and introspection features |
| Visual Studio |
IDE for Microsoft Development (.NET, .VB, Java, Python, C++, JS, TypeScript, and more) with IntelliSense |
| SQL Server Studio (SSMS) |
IDE and tools for managing, querying, designing, and monitoring SQL infrastructure and databases |
| Statistics and Data Analysis |
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| Access |
Microsoft's database management system which includes a graphical user interface, software-development tools, and support for interaction with varied data sources |
| Amos Graphics |
SPSS tool suite for visualizing structural equation modeling and other multivariate analysis |
| ATLAS.ti |
Suite of tools supporting annotation and analysis of written texts, audio, video, and graphic data |
| Excel |
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application that features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications |
| MAE Text Annotations |
General purpose text annotation tool for NLP with XML outputs |
| Matlab |
High-level language and interactive environment |
| R, RStudio |
Advanced statistical capabilities as well as a feature-rich programmatic platform to run complex analysis and reporting jobs |
| SAS 9.4 |
Software suite for advanced analytics, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics |
| SAS Enterprise Guide |
Point and click, menu, and wizard-driven tool that provides a guided mechanism to use SAS |
| SAS XML Mapper |
XML map support tool |
| SPSS |
Software suite supporting planning, graphics, data collection, analysis, reporting, and deployment |
| Stata |
Software suite supporting planning, graphics, data collection, analysis, reporting, and deployment |
| STAT/Transfer |
Convert data and spreadsheet files from one format to another quickly and reliably |
| TreeAge Pro |
Allows you to build decision trees to analyze a research problem; analysis tools allow you to calculate the expected value of each strategy and choose the optimal path |
| GIS |
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| ArcGis Pro |
Esri’s desktop GIS application to perform powerful geospatial analytics and map-making. ArcGIS Pro is the premier GIS software to geocode patient data, overlay environmental and demographic data, use spatial statistics to identify clusters (hot spot analysis), perform spatial queries, build models to automate tasks, built-in Jupyter Notebook, design map layouts with charts and graphs, and publish maps and 3D scenes. |
| ArcMap |
Esri’s legacy desktop GIS. This product is no longer receiving updates and users are strongly encouraged to move their projects to ArcGIS Pro. |
| StreetMap Premium (Batch Geocoding) |
High-quality street network and point-of-interest data for North America (USA, Canada, and Mexico) to perform batch geocoding of patient data and files with address records. |
Additional ArcGIS licensing can be requested here.
| Office and Publishing |
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| Acrobat Pro |
Full feature capability for interacting with PDFs |
| PowerPoint |
Create slide show presentations |
| Project |
Project management software to assist in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads |
| Visio |
Imaging program to create high quality diagrams that can represent databases, flowcharts, network architecture, org charts, floor plans, calendars, engineering schematics, and more |
| Word |
Word processing program and desktop publishing platform |
How to Request Access
Request a consultation, new account, or modify your current account by selecting the RAE Acct/User/Study Request Form or contacting the UCSF IT Service Desk at (415) 514-4100.
RAE is available 24/7 except Thursday evenings from 6–11:59 p.m. for system maintenance.
Support
Join the UCTech Slack channel #ucsf-rae to meet a community of peers and find the latest information about weekly office hours.
RAE users also have access to step-by-step documentation in the RAE support training library within MyTransfer.
