Scaling Digital Research Skills Across Australia
Intersect is using the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud to power innovative digital research skills building across Australia.
As digital methods become central to research in every discipline, the question facing universities and institutes is no longer whether to build digital capability, but how to do it at scale. For years, instructors spent the first half-hour of every workshop untangling conflicting software versions, variable laptop setups and missing datasets. Every minute lost to troubleshooting was a minute not spent on the digital research skills that matter: coding, data wrangling, using cloud services and working reproducibly.
Intersect Australia has removed this frustrating technical burden on researchers by leveraging Australia’s national research cloud, the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud (Nectar). By embedding the Nectar at the core of its skills training delivery, Intersect has turned what used to be hours of setup into more learning time, giving nearly 6,000 researchers every year a consistent, ready-to-use, online learning environment. In 2024 alone, 3,800 researchers – 65% of all Intersect trainees – learned on virtual machines (VMs) provisioned on Nectar, ensuring everyone started with the same tools, the same datasets and the same learning opportunities.
Intersect’s close relationship with the ARDC spans over 12 years. As a Nectar node, Intersect has been providing vital cloud computing services that underpin Australian research. Nectar is operated and maintained by the ARDC in partnership with 10 institutions across Australia and New Zealand, supporting thousands of research projects and 37 universities. This long-term collaboration between Intersect and the ARDC has been a powerful catalyst for innovation in research computing services and in building digital research skills.
Aidan Wilson, Digital Research Services Manager, Intersect, said, “The scalability and robustness provided by our Nectar-based systems have been critical to our success… it provides a standard, universal platform to learn core skills.”
The Challenge: Building Skills at National Scale, Without the Headaches
Intersect provides skills-building, research support and technical solutions to 10 universities and other organisations across Australia. This training and research support spans all research domains, from coding basics in Python and R to advanced computational methods such as SQL and High Performance Computing (HPC).
With nearly 6,000 researchers trained annually – including HDR students, academics, and professionals from various sectors – the sheer scale and diversity of Intersect’s audience creates significant logistical challenges for its skills-building programs.
For years, research instructors faced a frustrating truth: the start of every workshop was often lost to technical troubleshooting. This time spent fixing issues was a minute not spent teaching core skills like coding and data wrangling.
The first barrier was the pre-course setup. Researchers, especially those new to digital methods, often struggled through instructions to install complex software and datasets onto their own computers before the workshop even began.
Once training started, the sheer diversity of a national audience became an obstacle. Conflicting operating systems, variable laptop setups, and missing software meant instructors spent valuable time acting as part-time tech support, struggling to get everyone on the same page.
For advanced skills like HPC, the challenge was even greater. Trainers had to navigate the varied policies and technical configurations of different institutional clusters. This sometimes forced researchers to practice on sensitive production systems, which was far from ideal.
Kathryn Unsworth, Manager of Skilled Workforce, ARDC, confirms that setup is a significant barrier for digital research training. “The setup required for digital research training remains one of the biggest barriers for participants. It creates unnecessary technical overhead for trainers and often leads to an uneven learning environment. Some participants get left behind before the session even starts, while those ready to go are stuck waiting to get to the substance.”
Intersect needed a way to deliver consistent, reliable environments that removed these barriers entirely.
A Unified Cloud Classroom: Trainstation Meets Nectar
Intersect’s answer is Trainstation, a secure, browser-accessible training platform that provides every participant with a ready-to-use environment, with no local installs required. It represents the evolution of a decade-long journey:
- Early phase: Like many organisations, Intersect began with “bring your own laptop” workshops. In practice, this meant sacrificing teaching time to tech support.
- Virtualisation phase: Intersect moved to provisioning individual VMs per attendee, pre-configured with tools and data to remove local installation hurdles.
- Platform phase: Since the launch of Trainstation in 2024, Intersect now provisions user accounts per attendee on a single training platform, orchestrated from a console machine for speed and consistency.
Today, the Trainstation console and 4 Trainstation nodes run on the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud, delivering a robust, uniform learner experience from day one. From a single orchestration environment, Intersect can provision accounts rapidly; whether the course is on Python, R, Unix or SQL, every participant signs in to the same standardised setup, with the right libraries and datasets ready to go. It means that Intersect’s trainers can rely on the infrastructure to provide a robust, consistent experience for all attendees.
And the training is being well-received by researchers. One of the participants in an Intersect course said, “It was one of the best short courses I have participated in – I really liked that we could interact and follow along in real time with the activities – I learn by doing, so I love this.”
The ARDC commends Intersect’s solution to cumbersome training setups. Kathryn said, “Hats off to Intersect for removing that setup burden, giving everyone a fair go and allowing the training to focus on what really matters.”
Ben Chiu, Director, Services at ARDC said, “Building digital research capability at scale requires more than great training content – it requires accessible infrastructure to build confidence in skills. By leveraging the Nectar Research Cloud, Intersect’s platform removes much of the technical friction involved in setting up learning environments, allowing researchers to spend more time building the data and AI skills needed for modern research.”
Innovation Spotlight: A Cluster-in-the-Cloud for HPC Skills
HPC training adds a unique twist. Institutions often prefer learners to be trained before granting access to production clusters. Meanwhile, differences between clusters – hardware, schedulers, policies – make consistent, transferable training notoriously difficult.
Intersect has solved this with a simulated Slurm cluster running entirely inside Docker containers on the Nectar Research Cloud. This sandboxed environment:
- Replicates the HPC experience without using production systems, protecting real users and avoiding local admin overhead.
- Teaches universal HPC concepts like job scripts, queues, resource requests and fair use without being tied to any one institution’s configuration.
- Removes administrative burden for HPC teams, because Intersect controls user accounts in the training environment, institutions don’t need to provision temporary training access.
The result is both practical and powerful. The environment is so effective that completing this Nectar-based course is now a mandatory prerequisite for access to the HPC cluster at Deakin University, demonstrating institutional trust in the model and its outcomes.
What’s Next: AI and Beyond
The ARDC Nectar Research Cloud is the vital infrastructure enabling Intersect’s scalable, cloud-first training model, which is essential as the demand for AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC) skills rises. It is with Nectar as the stable foundation that Intersect can continuously adapt to new tools and methods, as demonstrated by their recent AI Bootcamps and Slurm-based HPC pilot program.
In addition to building digital research skills, Intersect and ARDC partnered to create an AI-ready application that helps researchers use Nectar GPUs for AI/ML methods. This solution provides standard Nectar AI/ML virtual machine images with pre-installed tools, making AI more accessible by reducing the need for extensive coding and IT knowledge. Through Nectar’s Application Catalogue, researchers can now easily select and apply various modelling components, from computer vision tools to large language models, to their own projects.
Together, Intersect and the ARDC are ensuring that digital research skills aren’t a barrier to discovery, but a catalyst for it.
Learn more about Intersect and the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud.
The ARDC is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to support national digital research infrastructure for Australian researchers.
Written by Esther Kane (Intersect) and Jo Savill (ARDC). Reviewed by Kathryn Unswoth and Ben Chiu (ARDC).