Google expands learning paths to help researchers get on the cloud

Academic researchers live in a world of constant change, as research processes and tools continue to get more powerful, but also more complex. With research tools advancing on a daily basis, academic and nonprofit research teams face an ongoing need for learning and re-training. But researchers tell us that with their heavy workloads they don’t have time to keep up with new technologies: they want to focus on moving their research forward.

In response, we have created new training pathways and resources that help researchers get up to speed quickly on Google Cloud. Whether you are a researcher wanting to build a genomics pipeline, run a Monte Carlo simulation, create an auto-scaling HPC cluster with Slurm, or host Jupyter Notebooks, we’ve curated training resources that will get you straight to the solution without wasting time or resources. We know that many of you want to apply the latest cloud-based artificial intelligence tools--like building a custom service to classify images from camera traps or video footage, or make better data predictions using the latest hardware acceleration--without a long learning path.

If this sounds familiar, here’s how we can help: 

Researcher-focused learning labs

Organized by research discipline, learning labs guide you through the cloud skills you’ll need for Engineering, Physical Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Computer Science, and Life Sciences. We also offer a downloadable guide which contains resources to help you with related cloud-computing solutions, like High Performance Computing, networking security, and data analytics. In addition, there are thousands of tutorials on Google’s Codelabs which are freely available for researchers looking to learn about related topics, such as mobile app development for Android and iOS.

Credits for training labs

Google Cloud Skills Boost allows you to get hands-on experience with a live Google Cloud tenant, which is setup temporarily for your training. It’s a safe sandbox environment that allows you to learn from doing, rather than simply observing somebody else. Explore your options and apply for credits.

Cloud grants for academic research

Researchers and PhD students from eligible institutions in selected countries can apply for up to US$5,000 of Google Cloud credits to access state-of-the-art research tools and skip the queue for computing resources. 

Research partnerships

We also work with regional partners on cloud skills programs for researchers, and are eager to collaborate with new partners.

• In the US, we worked with the National Science Foundation to provide cloud credit grants and instructor-led training as part of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering’s  program to support research capacity at Minority-Serving Institutions (CISE-MSI).

• In Australia, we partnered with AeRO and QCIF to provide 20 cloud credit grants and instructor-led training, specifically aimed at supporting Early Career Researchers and PhD students to accelerate their research projects.

If you’re a national or regional research organization, and are interested in partnering on a cloud skills program for your researchers, contact us at: gcpresearchpartner@google.com.