To use SANE for your research you will need to have a valid budget for the SURF Research Cloud service and be invited to a SANE project. We will assume that you have contacted the data provider regarding the use of the sensitive dataset you wish to analyse in SANE. You will need to provide the contact details of a contact person from the data provider in this procedure.

You can request a SANE projects in the following ways:

Requesting a SANE project through an NWO Compute grant

NWO offers eligible researchers free computing resources through the NWO Small Compute applications. You can request a SANE project alongside an NWO Small Compute application through the following steps.

  1. Log in to our Servicedesk and select Small Compute applications (NWO)
  2. Fill out the mandatory personal information fields
  3. In the Scientific project description field besides the project description, make sure the mention the following:
    • Project name: <e.g. SANE Medical Imaging Project>
    • Expected data size (GB): the total size (in GB) of your dataset and the expected generated results
    • Dataset ID or Name: the persistent identifier(s) (e.g. DOI) you wish to request or the name of the dataset
  4. Under the Resources section select the Research Cloud service
  5. Tick the box This project uses a Secure Analysis Environment (SANE)
  6. Fill out the mandatory fields that appear that are specific to SANE
  7. Submit the request

Requesting a SANE project through an existing contract

If you or your organization have a valid contract for the Research Cloud service you can simply request a SANE project as following.

  1. Log in to our Servicedesk and select Create a Ticket
  2. Fill out the fields filled out as shown in the screenshot below
  3. In the Description field make sure to mention the following:
    • Project name: <e.g. SANE Medical Imaging Project>
    • Contract name: <e.g. OFFERTE_XXXXXX>
    • Number of credits: <e.g. 5000 credits>
    • Data Provider contact person: <Full name & e-mail address> (Only one person can be listed here; additional data providers may be added later by this contact person.)
    • SANE variant: <Tinker or Blind>
    • Expected data size (GB): the total size (in GB) of your dataset and the expected generated results
    • Dataset ID or Name: the persistent identifier(s) (e.g. DOI) you wish to request or the name of the dataset
  4. Submit the request

Our servicedesk will subtract the specified number of credits from the contract and make them available for the SANE project that is being requested.

Currently, only projects (SRAM Collaborations) that are created under the SURF Research Cloud organisation in SRAM are supported. A Collaboration created from any other institute will not work.

What happens after I requested a SANE project?

Typically, within two working days, the data provider contact person will receive an invitation to the SANE Collaboration. The data provider will invite the researcher to the Collaboration (for a full step-by-step walkthrough for a data provider see the Data provider instructions).

Once the data provider has set up the SANE project, the researcher can follow the instructions to be found at Researcher instructions (Blind or Tinker).


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