“I am a sixth year graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. I started a transcriptomics project with little experience in coding and no experience in high powered computing (HPC). Without Bob Freeman’s work through ACI-REF I do not think I would have been able to complete my bioinformatics project. I was not aware of ACI-REF at the time I started my HPC bioinformatics work. To my good fortune I happened to connect with Bob Freeman at the weekly Research Computing office hours. Bob has accompanied me nearly every step of the way along my 6 month journey into HPC. Bob’s help has taken the form of instruction on coding, monitoring active jobs, writing and adapting scripts for my project, as well as connecting me with researchers working on similar problems or at similar stages in learning transcriptomics. In particular, building connections with other researchers at Harvard through ACI-REF has been one of the most useful experiences. I now often work through my HPC issues with graduate student and postdoc peers that I have connected with through Bob.”– Zack Lewis, Harvard University PhD Candidate, on Harvard ACI-REF Bob Freeman