A safe space to collect, build, maintain and analyze R&D data and prototypes

Our Mission

AERDF’s R&D Infrastructure (“aerdf.cloud”) is designed to facilitate secure collection, storage, sharing and analysis of research data and the building of prototypes. The R&D infrastructure enables early stage R&D studies and prototypes to be tested in practical settings by ensuring privacy and ethical protections for research partners and participants.

Team collaboration and integrative research are essential to advancing education R&D, but without the right tools to do so it is a significant challenge to ensure controls for data privacy and security are in place and properly maintained throughout the lifecycle of an R&D project. Therefore, AERDF has built an R&D infrastructure and carefully selected a system of tools designed to make protecting data and security simple, enabling its R&D programs and partners to focus on generating transformative R&D.

What is it

  • Cloud Data Storage

    To facilitate storing and sharing of data, we leveraged Box, a premiere cloud storage application. Its platform is easy-to-use and facilitates file creation, sharing, classification, and more. Box provides security, privacy, and compliance assurances. Box is FIPS 140-2 certified, and every file is encrypted using AES 256-bit encryption at rest and in transit.

  • Identity & Access Management

    An Identity Management System and User Interfaces facilitate access controls and single sign-on across all the applications. We developed a system that propagates user groups across all the applications, so administrators only need to create and manage user groups from one central location.

  • Collaborative Research & Development Tools

    The ability to collaborate on shared documents and code is essential to conducting efficient research processes. We deployed XWiki, a robust open-source platform, for developing and co-editing shared documents. Accessible through a Virtual Private Network, Gitlab offers superior capabilities for developing code and software applications.

  • Security & Data Protection

    Data protection and privacy are crucial to conducting research in the education space. A series of penetration tests and security reviews are performed annually, ensuring a strong security boundary. To verify all policies and security controls are implemented and functional, we maintain SOC 2 Type 2 and FERPA certifications.

  • For AERDF R&D Program and Project Teams

    If you are a researcher or developer on an AERDF R&D program, aerdf.cloud is available to you to support and facilitate your work.

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  • Share Data with AERDF R&D Programs

    The File Upload Tool is available for AERDF research partners and external contributors to safely share data with AERDF R&D programs.

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