Registration of New Projects and Users in the Pandemic

Overview

During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, even with social-distancing policies in place, there was a significant increase in demand for GridUnesp computational resources from the Unesp scientific community.

Many researchers reported being unable to use the infrastructure of their local campuses, highlighting the importance of remote access to GridUnesp for the continuity of their research.

Note

The period analyzed spans March 2020 to March 2022.

New Scientific Projects

The number of registered scientific projects kept growing steadily even during the remote-work period, as illustrated in the chart below.

New projects during the pandemic

Period

New projects

Percentage of total

Mar/2020 to Mar/2022

28

22%

Historical total up to 2022

123

100%

Among the 28 newly registered projects, the fields that stood out the most were:

  • Biology: 10 projects (36%)

  • Computer Science: 5 projects (18%)

  • Other fields: 13 projects (46%)

New Users

The number of new-user registration requests also grew sharply during the pandemic.

New users during the pandemic

Period

New users

Percentage of total

Mar/2020 to Mar/2022

164

21%

Total users up to 2022

755

100%

Monthly Evolution

The charts below show the monthly evolution of registrations during the pandemic period, with the most prominent increase in October 2020.

Distribution by Field of Knowledge

GridUnesp hosts projects and users from a diverse range of fields. During the pandemic, we received research requests in the following fields:

New projects by field (2020-2022)

Field

Number of projects

Percentage

Biology

10

36%

Computer Science

5

18%

Chemistry

3

11%

Biophysics

2

7%

Materials Science

2

7%

Engineering

2

7%

Astronomy

1

3%

Animal Science

1

3%

Law

1

3%

Others

1

3%

Note

The diversity of fields demonstrates the importance of GridUnesp as a multidisciplinary infrastructure supporting research at Unesp.

Impact of the Pandemic

The pandemic period highlighted:

  1. Infrastructure resilience: the cluster operated remotely without interruption

  2. Growing demand: a 22% increase in projects and 21% in users

  3. Scientific diversity: projects from 9 different fields

  4. Importance of remote access: researchers were able to continue their work

See also

  • Registration - Procedures for registering projects and users

  • COVID-19 - Overall impact of the pandemic on GridUnesp

  • Statistics - Complete cluster statistics