Getting Access

Request an account

You must first have an account before you can access Discovery. You request an account through ServiceNow. You will need a Northeastern username and password to access ServiceNow. If you are new to the university or a visiting researcher, work with your sponsor to get a Northeastern username and password.

Valid NU Credentials

Access to Discovery is limited to people affiliated with Northeastern who have a valid Northeastern username and password. Research Computing is not able to create or renew Northeastern accounts. You must work with your sponsor to obtain or update a valid Northeastern username and password.

To request an account, follow these steps:

1. Go to the ServiceNow Research Computing Access Request form.
2. Fill out the form, check the acknowledgement box, and click Submit.

Your request can take up to 24 hours to process after it has been approved by your sponsor (see Sponsor Approval Process below). You will receive a confirmation email when your access has been granted. After you have access, if you are not familiar with using Discovery, high performance computing, or Linux, you should take one of our training courses. See the Research Computing website for more information on our training and services.

Important

If you previously had access to Discovery, but you are now working with a different PI, submit a ServiceNow Research Computing Access Request form and enter the name of your current PI in the Sponsor field. This will link your account to your current PI. This is important to help expedite the process for updating your account with any of your current PI’s resources on Discovery, such as shared storage or a private partition.

Principal Investigator(PI)/Professor/Instructor Access

If you are a PI, professor, or instructor at Northeastern, and you need access to Discovery, you should use the access form in the above procedure, and in the Sponsor name field on the form, enter your own name.

Sponsor Approval Process

Every user on Discovery needs to have a sponsor approve their request, usually a PI or professor at Northeastern. PIs, professors, and instructors can sponsor themselves. Students (undergraduate or graduate), visiting researchers, or staff members must have a sponsor approve their request. When you fill out the ServiceNow form and enter the name of your sponsor, an email goes to the sponsor when you submit the request. Sponsors will continue to receive email reminders until they approve the request through the link in the email to ServiceNow. We recommended that before you submit an access request, let your sponsor know to look for the email with the link to the approval page to help expedite the process.