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WEHI Research Computing Platform

Public page for the WEHI Research Computing Platform (RCP)

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This is a list of FAQs that is divided into two areas - applying for the internship program and onboarding (joining) onto the internship program.

Applying for the internship program

Here are some Frequently Asked Questions that we hear from students.

How do I know if I am eligible?

For the enginering students, please contact engit-placements [at] unimelb [dot] edu [dot] au. For the data science and maths students, please contact science-industry-internships[at] unimelb [dot] edu [dot] au.

How flexible are the starting dates?

We are flexible. We aim to keep the same starting dates for everyone to make it easier to put people into the WEHI system, but the actual date you start can be flexible. You could start a week or two later if you need to. We are also flexible if you need to take time off during the internship as well.

Where are the details I need to fill in my form?

You can find the information here:

I know that the internships are usually 100% offsite, but what if I want to go into the office sometimes?

We are open to having some opportunities to go to the office, especially if we can catchup with the other students. It would not be that regular though, but this can be discussed with other students.

There are also places to network:

  1. There is a monthly onsite lunch with other Research Software Engineers (RSEs) around Parkville. There are also online meetings every month as well.
  2. The RSE Asia Australia unconference happens every year in September. This is an online event and we encourage you to attend as there are scholarships available.
  3. You can join the RSE Association of Australia and New Zealand via their website.
  4. There is a WEHI student symposium usually at the end of the year that we encourage you to attend. This is a link to the 2023 version of the Student Symposium (WEHI access only).
  5. You could proactively reach out to your fellow interns to see if there are others interested in networking.

How do I know you won’t get disengaged with the students?

We are committed to providing guidance, support, and mentorship throughout their internship experience. We recognize the importance of maintaining open lines of communication and being accessible to address their needs.

To ensure ongoing engagement, we have weekly check-ins with the student interns to discuss their progress, challenges, and goals.

We aim to get them to understand the conceptual parts on these weekly check-ins, so that they can work with the technical side of things at their own pace.

There is also a Virtual Computing Drop-in as well as a Thursday to talk more generally about careers and other skills.

What is the difference between data engineering, data analysis, and software engineering?

Data engineering is focused on streamlining and cleaning data systematically. Data analysis is focused on cleaning data and analysing it using statistical or machine learning algorithms. Software engineering is focused on systematising analysis or tools that help us make decisions.

Onboarding onto the internship program (Workday)

The Workday email says “On your first day, please arrive at 9.00am unless your manager has advised an alternative time and ask for your manager upon arrival at reception.” - is this accurate?

No, it is not accurate. This is a 100% remote internship and that part of the Workday email can be safely ignored. On your first day, you will be scheduled some virtual drop-in sessions so you can meet the supervisor and other interns.

I setup my Workday (HR system) through an initial email but now that password doesn’t work or I cannot login to my WEHI email

The links you might have previously used to access Workday before your official start date will no longer allow access. Email hr [at] wehi [dot] edu [dot] au as this is the contact provided if you encounter any issue in regard to Workday. They will provided you with the new credentials to set up your WEHI email. You may need to go into Incognito mode to get it to work.

What courses in Workday do I need to complete?

These are the key courses you need to do:

These are the courses you could do if interested:

These are the ones you can ignore as you are 100% remote:

Onboarding onto the internship program (Non-Workday)

How do I get access to the WEHI-wide student intern group using my WEHI email address?

To get access to WEHI-wide student intern group using your WEHI email address. We need to do this as we will be deleting the unimelb email access once everyone has their WEHI email addresses.

  1. Go to Teams > go to the teams option > put in the team code - this will be emailed to you on your first day
  2. Open it up in Microsoft Teams Client by selecting Open Microsoft Teams
  3. Click on Join button in blue
  4. It should then say Request Sent
  5. Wait for me to approve your access

Given that the internship is remote, am I allowed to complete the internship while on travel?

Yes, that is correct.

The description stated that so many hrs per week is expected, but at roughly which times and for how long?

As it is remote, we are very flexible but there are times when we do get together, such as the weekly project meeting. This is explained in the Student Internship Handbook.

I need to use storage and compute. What are my options?

We have a few options at WEHI for storage and compute.

Some projects have requirements that you can use your own laptop or computer. For others you can use the following options:

  1. If you want to use a High Performance Computer (HPC) to learn more skills, or you have bigger requirements of storage and compute than can fit on your laptop, you can use the Milton HPC To get access to Milton HPC, all WEHI researchers must first submit a request.
  2. If you use Milton HPC, you can use the VAST scratch space for your temporary storage.
  3. If you want to run a web server or service, then you can use Nectar, the Australian Research Cloud using your WEHI email and password.
  4. If you have small data files that your supervisor says is OK to share publicly and you want to share with future students, you can use figshare.
  5. If you have small data files that your supervisor says is not OK to share publicly and you want to share with future students, you can use the WEHI-wide student intern group on Sharepoint/Teams..
  6. If you have big data files and you want to share with future students, you can talk to your supervisor about using VAST projects. It would be rare for students to need a VAST project space, so please ask your supervisor first.

Research Computing Platform (RCP) also has training courses available for things like Python, Git, Linux, Milton and more.

RCP also has a drop-in session that you can go to ask technical questions about high-performance computing (HPC), Slurm usage, cloud computing, general programming, R, Python, package development, code optimisation, data processing, data storage, and data management.

If I want to use Nectar, what suggestions would you have?

Make sure you use “Any Availability Zone” if you are using Nectar as some of the University of Melbourne hosts are full.

It is recommended to use NeCTAR Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy) amd64 so that students can share documentation between projects and intakes.

Make sure you enable 22 SSH access with 0.0.0.0/0 using CIRS. See the Nectar SSH troubleshooting guide.

If you want to run a web server, it is recommended to use SSL and therefore you will need to enable 443 HTTPS access with 0.0.0.0/0 using CIRS. See the Nectar SSH troubleshooting guide.

If you want to run a flask development server, it is recommended to use SSL and therefore you will need to enable port 5000 access with 0.0.0.0/0 using CIRS. For other non-standard ports you will have to do a similar setup. See the Nectar SSH troubleshooting guide.

We should also have a standard to setup a SSL web certificate in the future.

Is it OK for me to post on social media?

Yes, but please read the Social Media Policy for student interns.

My project is complex and ambiguous - what can I do to deal with this?

All of the projects are complex and ambiguous.

This is an explanation on how to deal with a complex and ambiguous project.

What is the overall structure of the internship going to look like?

To understand how the overall process of the project please look at the Key milestones and onboarding emails page.

You ask us to be as independent as possible. How can we do that?

Rules of thumb for being independent:

We are required to interview a number of people to gather insight into their career pathway. How can I arrange this with you?

You can see more in Ask About Career on page 25 of the RCP Student Onboarding Checklist

For those doing the Bachelor of Science or the Master of Data Science course, you will need to ask a series of questions to a supervisor about their career. The questions are as follows:

There is a video available at Onboarding todo channel > Files > 2021-12-22 Data science internship survey questions.

Once you have watched this, if you have further questions, please email me and we can arrange a time to chat about this as a group.

We are required to request supervisor signature for the Work Log. How can I arrange this with you?

For those doing the Bachelor of Science or the Master of Data Science course, it is required to complete this supervisor signature work using DocuSign. This ensures that your work log is verified accurately and submitted on time.

To arrange this:

By using DocuSign, you can efficiently obtain your supervisor’s signature and ensure that your work log is ready for submission.

What should I put in the public wiki?

The public wiki is to share information with future students the things you needed to understand at a high level to be able to start working on the technical side of the project.

General knowledge to put into the wiki would include (among others):

NOTE: Please ensure that anything you put in the public domain is not private. The rule of thumb is that if you found the material on the public internet, you can treat it as public. If you found the material within WEHI or from a WEHI source, you should ask if you can make it public. If you are not sure, please ask your supervisor.

What should I put in my technical diary?

Within your project channel in Sharepoint (ie. within the WEHI-wide student intern group in Teams > Files), you should have a Technical notes folder for your intake eg. Semester 2 2023 Technical notes. This is to help future students understand what you did in detail to get your results. This also includes things that should not be made public. So descriptions of where you put data or how you ran a script on Milton should not be made public and should go in Sharepoint.

Technical knowledge to put into your technical diary in Sharepoint (among others) would include:

How should I ask for help to solve a problem?

There is a way to escalate how to ask for help. This shows you how you can do your proper due diligence before you send your supervsior an email with a question.

Before you send that email:

  1. Did you search through this FAQ, check the onboarding doc, and the wiki onboarding page via the project pages? Did you search for a keyword? If it is a broad question, did you do an internet search?
  2. Did you ask your project teammates to help you? That is what team mates are for!
  3. Did you write down in the email what actions you took in steps #2 and #3 so I know what you have tried?
  4. Did you specify exactly what you are having a problem with? ie. “I had trouble with a document” vs “I had trouble accessing ABC.doc in Sharepoint folder X”.
  5. Did you cc in your team mates into the email so that they can find out too?

Please also make sure you explain the problem in detail, with screenshots and any error messages. These should be saved into your technical diary that should be stored in Sharepoint.

What are the key things to do before the weekly meetings?

Key things to do before for the regular weekly meeting (yes even the first one that is usually in week 2 although it will be mostly empty):

  1. Please meet as a team before the meeting without your supervisors to ensure you as a team of students are all on the same page
  2. Please send a weekly email update one business day before the meeting (ie. Friday if you have a Monday meeting) with the subject ‘[Project name] week [x] update’ eg. ‘Clinical Dashboards week 3 update’. The email should have:
    1. what each student has done,
    2. write down any questions you have for the meeting to use as an agenda,
    3. provide links to the previous final presentations by previous students,
    4. provide a link to the whiteboard session video or image you did (after week 4),
    5. provide a summary of the top things you discussed in the whiteboard session (after week 4),
    6. provide a link to the wiki and/or the GitHub repository,
    7. provide a link to the technical notes in WEHI-wide student intern group in Sharepoint / Files in Teams
    8. remember to ask to record the meeting to more easily keep notes if needed,
    9. and provide bullet point summary from previous meeting.

What happens over Christmas / New Year / Easter period?

We take a break between Christmas and New Year, as well as the first week of January as well. During the time away there is no need to write and send the weekly update email during the break. We do encourage you to write down questions and what you have done in your technical diary so that you can ask questions when we are back in the second week of January.

Remember, we ask you to write up a presentation to say what you think you should do on the project. This helps you become independent. If you do decide to do some work over the holidays, understanding the high level problem will help you make decisions at a technical level without your supervisor’s help.

Easter break usually has three public holidays at WEHI Good Friday, Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday. We take a break on those days.

You can confirm the breaks via the Public and WEHI holidays on Catalyst.

What do I need to do for my final presentation and summary report?

The final presentation and summary report are due on the last week of the internship. They are usually done at the same time as the regular weekly project meeting. It is important to provide an early draft and a late draft to your supervisors for both the final presentation and the summary report. The early draft is to make sure you are on the right track, and the late draft is to polish things. Please put them into Teams Files / Sharepoint so that they can be commented on directly by your supervisors.

We create a single document for all summary reports to be filed together. You will be sent a link to this document when it is ready.

The one page project summary audience is for myself and potential researchers who want to understand what you have done from a high level point of view, but can easily click on links to get to the technical detail / reports / visualisations. The one page summary should be handed in before the presentation or before the internship finishes.

For your final presentation – please make sure you have an acknowledgement slide and show the slides to your supervisor before your final presentation. A good example of a set of slides is here.

The audience for the presentation is for future students and for researchers who might be interested in understanding what you have done from a high level point of view, but can easily look at the wiki to find out more.

Maximum time for the presentation is 15 to 20 minutes.