Getting started with bioscience services
Did you know, that many of CSC’s services are free-of-charge* for academic research, education and training in Finnish higher education institutions and in state research institutes? We offer wide variety of services, accompanied with trainings and support. Thus, there are also many ways and angles you can get familiar with our services – it all depends on your specific needs! In this blog post we aim at presenting some possible approaches to start your journey with us!
What do we have to offer for YOUR needs?
We have collected a few “starting points” for our bioscience customers in mind. These pages and recordings aim at giving a nice overall view of how you could benefit from our services:
- Getting started with CSC services for bioscientists
- Learning materials for bioscientists
- CSC resources for bio users webinar recording
- Short video with example of how our services could be used in our Youtube channel
- In the service catalog you can find all the computing and data management services and tools that CSC provides for researchers
It’s not all coding: Easy-to-use services
The beginning can often be the trickiest phase. Luckily, we also have easy-to-use solutions with low learning curves! For example, the Puhti web interface at www.puhti.csc.fi can be used to access the Puhti supercomputer using just a web browser. With Chipster web application, you can analyse your sequencing data in a intuitive and well-documented graphical user interface. You can use Chipster with your institutes or CSCs credentials. Notebooks courses offer a nice approach for example for learning Python and R, and course use of Notebooks is nice and easy because participants can login also with their institute credentials!
When you need the CSC account
Not all our services require CSC account (see the table of services on the bottom of the page), but many do. CSC user account can be obtained using myCSC customer portal. The summarized overview of what you need to do to get access to CSC services helps to figure out the steps needed.
Training and learning material help you to reach your goals efficiently
Our training calendar lists upcoming courses (please note, that usually our trainings have some very reasonable fee to cover the training costs), and our online course offering at e-Lena elearning platform is in your use 24/7 (e-learning materials are often freely available). When starting out with our services like Puhti or Mahti, we recommend our free CSCs computing environment eLearning course. In our docs.csc.fi manual pages, we have a learning material bank and lots of tutorials on various topics, including bioinformatics tutorials. Some popular topics include for example Linux basics, data analysis and Python & R. Our Elements of supercomputing online learning material will give you a good overview of what supercomputers are and why and how they can be used.
ELIXIR brings together life science resources from across Europe
CSC is the ELIXIR node of Finland. You can find useful trainings and materials also in ELIXIR’s TeSS portal. Via ELIXIRcommunities, you can network with other scientists in your field!
When you need tips and guidance with data management, you can check out ELIXIR RDMkit. It contains good data management practices applicable to research projects from the beginning to the end.
We are here to help!
We have a punch of specialists ready to help you out, so don’t be shy to contact us at servicedesk@csc.fi! This is the best and fastest way to get help – especially when all the relevant information is already available in the first message (see tips on how to write a good support requests). We have also gathered many of the common questions to our manuals FAQ section. We are now also piloting weekly coffee hours in Zoom. The idea there is that you can join and chat with us, and we can together figure the best solutions for you. Especially in the beginning there might be lots of questions, that are more easily solved in a Zoom session.
We would love to work with you, let’s make great science together!
*The usage is subsidised by the Ministry of Education and Culture. If you’re unsure whether or not your use falls within the free-of-charge use, see information about purchasing services or expert support or contact CSC Service desk: servicedesk@csc.fi.
Maria Lehtivaara
The author is an application specialist in biosciences, working at customer support and service development at CSC. Email: maria.lehtivaara (at) csc.fi