WHO CAN USE IRIS? Faculty and staff with a project in the early stage of development can attend an IRIS triage workshop or meet with a triage advisor to be guided to the right node and/or contact person. All staff and faculty at UCLA are eligible to make use of the IRIS network, but services allocated according to scheduling priorities determined with the IRIS executive board.
IRIS INTEGRATED RESEARCH
WHAT KIND OF PROJECTS DOES IRIS SUPPORT? The goal of IRIS is to create high level research capacity through an integrated infrastructure consisting of staff expertise, technical resources, and services. A high level of general support for research has to be combined with specialized solutions within individual disciplines or projects.
INFRASTRUCTURE
DOES IRIS HELP WITH GRANT FUNDING? An IRIS grants and development officer works as a liaison with development staff in home units to identify funding sources and opportunities, to develop cross-disciplinary funding opportunities, and to assist in grant proposal development. IRIS’s grant writing and development staff do not take on grant writing for individual projects and/or faculty, but may work with projects that cross disciplinary units and/or represent a unique opportunity to target funding that would not otherwise be available (e.g. where eligibility depends on the cooperation of more than one unit). IRIS does receive a small pool of funds designed to be issued on a competitive basis in the form of research support (hours of staff time, other IRIS resources) for the incubation of new projects and as seed money for promising and/or experimental (risky) projects.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE The nodes of expertise for research and learning include:
3D VR modeling Archiving Arts/science Assessment of learning outcomes Data Visualization Database programming Design Digital publication
Gaming Grant administration Grant writing support Spatial scholarship/ GIS Statistics Survey Text analysis Web development
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S U P P O R T N E T W O R K
IRIS is a joint project of the OIT, IDRE, and the Deans and heads of the various administrative and academic units at UCLA. It seeks to promote innovative, interdisciplinary work as well as work at the forefront of individual domains and to create ongoing support for creation of a knowledge community producing research at the highest possible levels. IRIS is also generously sponsored by funding institutions, private donations, and philanthropic contributions. contact: IrisDevelopment@ucla.edu
IRIS Integrated Research Infrastructure & Support Network
IRIS IS AN INTEGRATED NETWORK OF SPACES, INFRASTRUCTURE,
LEVELS AND SERVICES
AND DIGITAL SERVICES DESIGNED TO SUPPORT FACULTY AND STAFF RESEARCH AT UCLA.
IRIS is structured in a tiered system of support that directly reflects the allocation of staff time, resources, and other services:
IRIS SPACES
North campus IT support units (•) and computing labs (•) are currently focused on faculty within particular Schools, Divisions, and Departments.
An integrated infrastructure is needed to reduce redundancy, optimize knowledge exchange, and create incentivedriven opportunities for collaboration.
This integrated infrastructure will support a network of core-funded cross-disciplinary Research Support Units organized by methodologies, tools, and techniques.
HOW IRIS WORKS IRIS consists of physical spaces (labs, sandboxes, support units), technical resources (data storage, file exchange, etc.) and expertise (project development, visualization, etc.) connected in a virtual network.
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CONSULTATION
2
DEVELOPMENT
3
IMPLEMENTATION
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SUSTAINABILITY/ CONCLUSION
Any faculty and/or staff with a research project that needs expertise, technical or service resources, can make use of IRIS staff on a time-available basis for assistance at the beginning stages of a project. Consultations are available through standard service models: drop-in consultation hours, appointment with an IRIS staff member, attendance at an IRIS triage workshop or a specific tool/method or technique.
It is designed to help faculty and staff researchers identify support for digital project conception, development, grant writing, implementation, and conclusion or sustainability, creating a pool of expertise and a shared infrastructure.
IRIS aims to make it easy for faculty and staff to identify where expertise resides, what the resources are that are available for project support, and how to get the consultation appropriate for each level or phase of a research project’s lifecycle.
Assistance in project development is also done on a consulting basis and on a time-available basis. IRIS staff are prepared to teach faculty and research staff how to do the work on their projects, but will not do the actual work for them (e.g. teach them mark-up or database design, not mark-up texts or create a data-base or maintain it). Project development can be as simple as recommending an existing tool or as complex as helping assess the full design of a project. IRIS staff have the prerogative to set priorities based on judgments about project success, potential and the best use of their time and IRIS resources.
Assistance in the implementation of projects is on a time-available basis, with priorities set by a combination of order received, viability, degree of complexity/involvement, opportunity for staff development/growth, odds of success, and other criteria determined by the IRIS staff. Implementation assistance is not direct work on a project, but is limited to active consulting, with the exception noted below.
IRIS staff help to create a work flow model for projects with long-term sustainability and/or projects that reach a conclusion and should be stored, published, or maintained in some accessible form.
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IRIS staff are specialized consultants. They will not do actual work on a project unless they have been specifically built into a grant and/or funding stream that is based on a cost-recovery model for billable hours.