WPH Office of Academic Computing (OAC)

“The OAC worked closely with me to develop exactly what we needed for our text- and browser-based ecological momentary assessment protocol. This powerful and reliable smartphone-based system has worked extremely well for both of our ongoing adolescent studies, and their team has always responded quickly and effectively whenever minor hiccups do occur.”

~Brant P. Hasler, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Clinical and Translational Science

“I head the Computational Genetics Program at WPIC, but the OAC is the CGP’s source of computing information and support. Many of you know that the CGP does computationally-intensive genetics research. What most of you don’t know is that we have done much of our work on two computer clusters designed in collaboration with OAC, who helped us build high-end computing on the cheap, at least cheap by industry standards. And OAC has maintained those clusters without a hitch. When we need help or advice, OAC responds within the hour. I rely on the OAC to make my job and life easier.”

~Bernie Devlin, Ph.D. | Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science

“Our group has been a beneficiary of the services of OAC since 1999, when we started an NIH-funded project that required a new information services infrastructure. OAC set up this infrastructure, helped us buy the right equipment, set up remote data entry and local database administration, helped us hire the right programmer and database administrator, and provided technical support and backup as needed (and it was needed a lot). For our most recent project which began in 2005, they performed the same functions but also built us multiple websites; one for public access, one for internal access, and a SharePoint site for inter-departmental and cross-institutional access. All of these processes are functioning well and have served to enhance the quality of our research activity and our research communication. OAC staff are uniformly helpful and often go the extra mile for us.”

~Mary Ganguli, M.D., M.P.H. | Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Neurology

“OAC has been instrumental in setting up our latest clinical trial. From online screening by recruiters, to online direct data entry, to data base set-up, OAC has cut through the obstacles and produced results—quickly.”

~Daniel J. Buysse, M.D. | UPMC Endowed Chair in Sleep Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science

“The OAC’s data entry and management systems save my projects’ time, money, and resources. Using high-quality, individually tailored web-based forms, all of the data for my projects are entered at the time they are collected, and back-end access to the database allows my staff and I to analyze participant’s responses immediately. Furthermore, OAC’s texting services allow me to reach, communicate with, and recruit younger adults – a population that can be challenging to engage using older technologies.”

~Jay C. Fournier, Ph.D. | Associate  Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University

“The OAC has taken our ongoing need to make our data collection paperless and has made it a reality! They are highly professional, collaborative and have created a sustainable system that helps us monitor our patients’ ongoing status and safety.”

~David A. Brent, M.D. | Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Epidemiology, and Clinical and Translational Science and Endowed Chair in Suicide Studies

“The OAC has been instrumental in creating and maintaining the system that we use for evaluation of the emergency medicine residents. They created a unique system that allows us to send targeted shift evaluations to faculty and residents via text-message and smartphone technology in real-time as they’re working together on a shift in the emergency department. It has totally revamped the way that we provide feedback and assessment data to our trainees. The OAC is a hidden gem within the University.”

~Adam Z. Tobias, MD, MPH, FACEP | Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine