In this AARNet winter series of Researcher Talks, researchers across different domains shared how they are using AARNet infrastructure to accelerate their research.

Each of the four monthly sessions featured a presentation by a researcher, who spoke about their work and the tools and techniques they use for analysis, such as CloudStor's SWAN (Service for Web-based ANalysis).

These interactive sessions facilitated a peer-learning environment by providing an opportunity for knowledge sharing led by researchers who are already in the driver's seat, harnessing the power of Jupyter Notebooks and the AARNet cloud for their research analysis needs.

Below we have a recap of each of the four sessions along with a recording of the webinar.

Using CloudStor for Managing and Analysing Research Data

Speaker: Dr Robert Luke, Research Fellow, Macquarie University.

In this talk, Dr Luke discussed how his multidisciplinary teams use CloudStor infrastructure for backing up, archiving, and sharing data. He also showed how team members use SWAN collaboratively for data validation, signal processing, and statistics.

Tips and Tricks for using CloudStor, FileSender and SWAN (Bash+R)

Speaker: Ammar Aziz (PhD), WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza (VIDRL - Doherty Insititute)

In this presentation, Ammar Aziz demonstrated how he uses CloudStor for working remotely, continual backup of data through ownCloud, and collaborating with overseas colleagues using FileSender. He also demonstrated some tips and tricks for working with Bash+R on the SWAN cloud computing platform.

Interoperability between AARNet CloudStor and external services

Speaker: Dr Steffen Bollmann, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland.

In this talk, Dr Bollmann highlighted interoperability examples between AARNet CloudStor and external tools and services like Zotero, the open science foundation (OSF) and high-performance computing clusters. He showed how CloudStor can be used as a backend storage for the open source literature management Zotero, how files stored on CloudStor can be accessed and shared via external services like OSF, and how data on CloudStor can be accessed using the command line interface on high-performance computing systems.

CloudStor SWAN as a teaching tool

Speaker: Steven Morgan, Bioinformatician and Academic specialist, Melbourne Bioinformatics and The University of Melbourne.

In this presentation, Steven Morgan discussed how CloudStor’s analysis tool SWAN has been integrated into the teaching of a masters-level subject at The University of Melbourne. Steven shareed the lessons learned from the semester, the advantages of using the service in a teaching environment, and provide some tips for others who may want to enhance their teaching.