Give to gain: how these RMIT academics are shaping the future of research with RACE

This year's International Women's Day theme, 'Give to gain', calls on all of us to share time, knowledge, resources and opportunities so that gender equality can move from rhetoric to reality.

Across RMIT, researchers are already living this principle. For a growing number of them, the RACE Hub's dedicated commercial cloud supercomputing facility is one of the tools helping them do it.

Hear from researchers across RMIT on how they are using RACE to drive their work and open doors for others.

From idea to impact

For many of these academics, cloud supercomputing was not an obvious starting point.

Dr Kate Gerber, whose background is in psychology and end-of-life research, used RACE to develop a voice-to-voice AI interviewer designed to explore public attitudes toward new end-of-life technologies.

"Using RACE's expertise allowed me to move from a conceptual theory to a working AI system far more quickly than would otherwise have been possible," she says.

Access to RACE meant Kate and her collaborators could prototype, critically examine and refine the system together and experiment, iterate, and learn in real time.

Crucially, Kate stresses that cloud infrastructure does not have to be the domain of specialists.

"As a grief and death researcher, I was initially a bit apprehensive about approaching a team of computing experts, worrying that we may not speak the same language, but the team at RACE was incredibly welcoming, supportive and open to accommodate any of my requests," she says.

For Kate, this support is also about equity. She described having access to this kind of shared infrastructure as essential if we want AI research to reflect diverse experiences, ethical perspectives, and areas of social need.

It's a clear example of 'Give to gain', when technical experts give time and explanation, more diverse researchers gain the confidence and capability to shape AI in care-focused or socially sensitive domains.

Making interdisciplinary collaboration possible

Dr Nancy An focuses on designing and evaluating AI-driven chatbots to support healthcare workers in accessing guidelines and reducing the burden of repetitive documentation tasks.

She says using RACE cloud computing has significantly accelerated her work by providing accessible infrastructure that allows rapid deployment and testing of prototypes in realistic settings.

For Nancy, one key advantage of RACE is that it provides an easy entry point to advanced computing infrastructure, which is especially valuable for interdisciplinary and community-based research.

"In [my] projects, collaborators such as nurses and social workers contribute domain expertise but may not have experience with large-scale computing environments, she says.

"RACE lowers these technical barriers, allowing diverse teams to prototype and iterate quickly while focusing on real-world problems."

Her advice aligns strongly with 'Give to gain'.

"Engage with the RACE specialists early…their guidance helps clarify architecture decisions, estimate costs, and identify best practices, which greatly increases confidence when starting a project."

Reducing barriers, amplifying inclusion

Associate Professor Sonika Tyagi uses RACE to support AI and digital health research that depends on large, complex datasets.

"RACE cloud computing has significantly accelerated our AI and digital health research by giving us rapid, on-demand access to scalable compute and storage," she says.

"This has reduced delays associated with local infrastructure constraints and procurement, allowing faster model training, large-scale multi-omics and clinical data analysis, and reproducible pipeline deployment."

Sonika highlights that RACE offers scalable infrastructure, managed environments, secure data governance, and lower barriers to entry compared with building local high-performance systems.

By providing enterprise-grade compute without major capital investment, research groups like hers can keep up with growing and fast changing demands of the computing ecosystem.

From an inclusion and diversity perspective, Sonika is clear: "This facility is very important from an inclusion and diversity perspective, as the cloud access helps level the playing field for under-resourced research groups as well as early-career researchers."

Flexibility, access and diverse careers

Dr Jessica Rivera Villicana works with large geospatial datasets for urban research at a national level that are often far too big to comfortably process on a standard laptop, and benefit from the newest processing hardware, which is often expensive and hard to find.

"Using RACE means I can run these data-intensive workflows in the cloud and store inputs and results there as well without local hard drive limitations," she explains.

"It's allowed me to work with datasets that simply wouldn't be feasible on personal devices and that's accelerated both experimentation and delivery."

From Jessica's perspective, one of the biggest advantages of cloud computing is access.

"You don't need a powerful local machine or a dedicated research lab to work with large datasets, you just need an internet connection and the right setup."

She links this flexibility directly to diversity: "Flexible infrastructure enables flexible careers," she says.

"Cloud tools support remote collaboration, which is important for researchers balancing caregiving, career breaks, or living in different locations."

Her advice to others is to start with a clear goal, learn the basics and build confidence gradually.

"Cloud computing can feel intimidating at first, but it's a powerful skill. And increasingly, it's becoming part of being a modern researcher."

As International Women's Day 2026 reminds us, progress depends on what we are willing to share. The women featured here show that when knowledge, infrastructure, and care are shared generously, everyone stands to gain, and RACE is one of the platforms helping make that shared progress possible.