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Getting Started In The Group

Welcome to the Monash Computational Chemistry Group! This is just a short document to point you in the direction of resources you might need. The exact details might differ depending on whether you’re coming into the group as an undergraduate researcher, starting a PhD, or are an external researcher spending some time at Monash. However, the broad processes are the same regardless!

Where are our offices?

When you get to campus, likely the first thing to do is come see us! Our offices are in room 316 on the third floor of the Green Chemical Futures (GCF) building. The GCF is on the north-west side of compus, but the much easier way to find the building is on the Monash digital map, or on Google Maps. Anyone should be able to get into the GCF during standard business hours, but getting into our office in particular will require a knock on the door and someone letting you in until you have official access.

Office Access

Getting access is as simple as filling out a form available on the School of Chemistry Intranet called the Access & Key Request Form, requesting access to room 316 in the GCF (in the current version of the form, it’ll ask you about access to the old building first, and you can just leave all of those blank). You’ll need a Monash ID to be able to do so.

Getting an ID Card

With a recent change, you don’t need a physical ID card if you don’t want one! The Digital M-Pass lets you do all the things you’d do with your ID card using an Android or Apple phone. If you don’t want to use the Digital M-Pass, a physical ID card can be obtained by heading to Monash Connect and taking a photo there, where the card will be printed.

School of Chemistry Induction

There’s also some admin work and safety precautions that have to happen before you can start your work. As we haven’t had someone start purely computational work while we’re in the new building, I’m not entirely certain what this will entail - I’ll update it when I do. It will likely require being shown routes to exits, where medical supplies are found, and the like.

In addition to being shown around the building, you’ll need to fill out some paperwork. Most of this is very straightforward, but the risk assessment is typically a stumbling block if you’re in our lab exclusively for computational work. In this case, the risks are just those of office work - we’ve typically put down things such as health impacts from remaining stationary for excessive periods as the main concern. Some of this paperwork will likely require a web browser, so if you have one try to bring a laptop!

High Performance Computing Facilities

Our group has access to several HPC facilities - places we can run computational jobs that are too time-consuming to run on our own computers. These include:

  • Two local HPC facilities on Monash campus, MonARCH and MASSIVE. Both of these are connected to the Monash eResearch Centre, and so both use the same HPC ID account - you just need to create one, and then gain access to both MonARCH and MASSIVE using the instructions linked above. We do not have limited time on these facilities, but they’re not as large as the other facilities we have access to - it can be harder to run larger jobs, or a large amount of jobs, on these facilities. Our main project ID on MASSIVE is sn29, and on MonARCH is p2015120004.
  • The Gadi HPC facility from NCI is a much larger HPC facility than MonARCH and MASIVE, and we have access to a limited amount of time at this facility. Jobs that need large quantities of nodes are best to run here, but we’ll discuss allocation of time to individual researchers each quarter - don’t just run your jobs.
  • The Setonix HPC facility is one we’ve recently got access to, and is similar to Gadi - large, powerful, but time-limited, and time is allocated in the group to individual researchers. You can’t register for this one manually - you’ll have to ask Katya to add you to the project. GPUs are currently unavailable on Setonix (they should be available by the end of Q2 2023), and so a small GPU-only HPC facility is available with the same account - Topaz.

General Advice

The group wiki that this article is hosted on also has plenty of other articles designed to help you with your work! The following articles are likely helpful regardless of the work you’re doing in the group:

Hopefully this is able to help you get settled in to the group!