COVID-19

In support of critical NIH intramural coronavirus research, we can provide increased priority for COVID-19 projects on Biowulf. If your work is related to COVID-19, please send us a short description of the research and the Biowulf resources needed.

During this period when most NIH personnel, including the HPC staff, are working remotely, the best way to contact the staff is by sending email to staff@hpc.nih.gov. We also hold monthly Zoom-In consults, where anyone is welcome to ask any Biowulf-related questions. The schedule for the consults is on our training page.

Quick Links Email Walk-In Consults Phone Scientific Questions

Email (preferred)

Send email to staff@hpc.nih.gov with any questions, problems, or concerns about your use of the Biowulf cluster and associated resources. If your computing needs are not addressed by the existing software and compute resources of the NIH HPC Systems, or you are interested in a new application, let us know.

In general, it's a bad idea to send email directly to a particular staff member. If the person is away, your problem may take longer to be resolved. It is preferable to send email to the staff address above, or call the NIH IT Service Desk and ask to be transferred to the HPC staff.

Walk-In Consults

The HPC staff hold Walk-In Consults in coffee-shops around the main campus once a month. All Biowulf users, and all those interested in using the systems, are invited to stop by and discuss problems and concerns, from scripting problems to node allocation, to strategies for a particular project, to anything that is affecting your use of the HPC systems. We'll try to address simpler issues on the spot and follow up on more complex questions after the Walk-In. No appointments are necessary, and all problems are welcome. Look for the signs saying 'Biowulf Walk-In Consults' on the tables to find us!

Announcements of upcoming consults are emailed to HPC users, and the schedule is available on the HPC Calendar.

Telephone & Web

You can reach the HPC @ NIH staff by calling (301) 496-4357 to get the NIH IT Service Desk. You can also submit a request for help using their online form. The staffers there will assist you with routine inquiries about accounts, passwords, and policies, and can register you for classes. Specific Helix/Biowulf-related calls will be transferred to the HPC staff.

Scientific Questions

The HPC staff is knowledgeable about the complexities of running scientific applications on the systems, but more general or specialized scientific questions may be better directed to the NIH intramural community. Examples are: What is the best approach for analyzing XYZ? I want to do P, then Q and R -- is there a recommended pipeline? Is anyone using ABC technology?

Some intramural resources that are appropriate for such questions:

• NIH Intramural Bioinformatics Special Interest Group list.
• NIH Intramural Data Science list.
• NIH Intramural Data Science Slack group. https://join.slack.com/t/nihdatascience/signup. NIH personnel should be able to join with their NIH email address. Any current member can invite new members or create private channels.
• NIH Data Science Online Learning Community on Teams. Join here. NIH personnel should be able to join with their NIH email address. Contact: Lisa Federer, NLM, (lisa.federer@nih.gov) or Allissa Dillman (allissa.dillman@nih.gov).
• NIH Bring-Your-Own-Bioinformatics Slack group: https://join.slack.com/t/nih-byob/signup.
• BTEP (Bioinformatics Training and Education Program): BTEP Office Hours