The NIH STRIDES Initiative gives discounts and other benefits to researchers who have been funded by the NIH and wish to use that funding in the cloud.

An NIH STRIDES account request has multiple components and requires information from both the NIH-funded researcher and her/his institution’s cloud enablement team. This document will help you identify the information you will be asked to provide and guide you through forms and necessary steps. It is important you read through this entire document before beginning.

Overview

The first step will be to fill out the DLT Account Request Portal and attach to that request DLT’s NIH STRIDES Request Form.

Once you have submitted your request with the STRIDES attached, your request will pass from DLT to Four Points for review and then to the NIH for approval. Once approved, an AWS account will be created (unless you created one ahead of time) and the account information will be passed to AWS in order to configure the proper pricing and support plans.

When final approvals and configurations are complete, the account will be ready to use. HOWEVER, in order for the STRIDES discounts and benefits to be reflected in your AWS account by the first of the month, this process must complete its full course by the 15th of the prior month. With this in mind, it is recommended that you begin your request on or before the first of the month in order to have it ready on the first of the following month.

Preparing Your Request

To expedite the process, please gather the information requested in the DLT request portal and STRIDES form in order to answer these questions.

Technical (portal)

  1. Will you be creating a new AWS account under DLT, requesting STRIDES authorization for an existing account under DLT, or transferring an existing account account from outside your NET+ AWS Organization?
    1. If it is a new account, will you create it yourself in your AWS Organization manually or through an automated process like Control Tower or will you ask DLT to create it for you?
    2. If it is an existing account, are you prepared to confirm that the workloads in the account will be limited to things directly related to the NIH grant associated with this STRIDES request?
    3. If you are transferring the account to DLT, do you have the root credentials to the account and access to the email associated with it?
  2. Will the account contain HIPAA data?
  3. Will the account need to be hosted in AWS GovCloud?
  4. Account type (dev/test or production) - optional
  5. Workload - optional

Business (portal)

  1. What will the source of payment for the account be? (e.g., PO number)
  2. What is the name of the department/lab/researcher requesting the STRIDES account?
  3. What is the name of the project or program associated with the account?
  4. What email address will be used for the root credentials for the account?
  5. Who is the lead technical contact (name, email, and phone number)? This is whoever will hold the root credentials and, where appropriate, receive GovCloud credentials.
  6. Who is the purchasing officer (name, email, and phone number)? This is the person who DLT would reach out to if there are any business questions about the account.

STRIDES/Grant information (form)

  1. Who is the Scientific POC (Principal Investigator or other awardee who has overall responsibility for scientific direction, responsible for setting (or delegating) security policies and financial oversight of cloud resources) - Name, email, institution?
  2. What is the NIH Funded Project Award/Grant # (Derived from NIH Notice of Award, uniquely identifies NIH-funded research projects) that will be linked to this STRIDES account?
  3. What is the Administering NIH Institute or Center (Derived from Notice of Award)?
  4. Who is the NIH Program Official Name (Derived from Notice of Award) - name, email? 
  5. Has the researcher secured approval from the Program Officer? 
  6. Keywords (List of terms describing scientific area(s), technologies, and/or conditions relevant to research project)
  7. Summary and Justification (Brief description of the research problem clearly identifying the direct relevance of the project to biomedical research)

Naming Convention

NIH STRIDES accounts strive to adhere to a strict account naming convention. If you are requesting DLT create your account, they will use the information provided to name the account properly. If you are creating the account manually or via Control Tower, you are asked to follow this convention. If the account has already been created, please work with DLT via the request/transfer process to reconcile the account name.

NIH STRIDES accounts should follow the naming convention:

 NIH-Awd.XXX.YYY.STRIDES.I2.ZZZ

  • XXX - Institution’s domain name (Harvard, UChicago, BCM, etc.)
  • YYY - Administering NIH Institute or Center - Derived from the Notice of Award. There are 27 NIH ICs. Use their abbreviations (NCI, NHLBI, NIGMS, etc.)
  • ZZZ - Short title of the project (no more than 16-20 characters long)