DBS: Research Information Systems Unit (RISU)

Scott Rushing, Director

RISU Mission Statement

The Research Information Systems Unit develops more efficient methods for collecting, managing, and integrating research databases using emerging computer technology.

In support of that mission, RISU is organized into three main subgroups: an application engineering group responsible for developing web-based project management systems, a systems group which provides oversight for all server and desktop related computing infrastructure, and a data entry group which provides high quality in-house data entry to funded projects. Application development efforts are focused on using the latest technologies and highly skilled individuals to provide high quality data management systems that facilitate a research project’s workflow.

The RISU infrastructure integrates highly customized web-based data management applications with relational database management and statistical analysis systems into a full featured project management system that allow for the collection, validation and analysis of all project data. System administration efforts are focused on providing secure, state-of-the-art computational resources which are required to support the web-based data management operations and statistical analysis requirements for all projects. Those include load balanced web server farms, high performance computing systems and clusters, network attached storage and facilitating systems backups and system recovery.