Infrastructure

UNIRIO Graduate Program in Computer Science (PPGI-UNIRIO) develops its academic and administrative activities in the Exact Sciences and Technology Center (CCET) of UNIRIO, at Urca Campus (Av. Pasteur, 458), Rio de Janeiro -RJ. This building (with the old and new wings) houses the course secretariats, the professors’ offices, an auditorium with capacity for one hundred people, four floors of classrooms with various capacities (from fifteen to eighty students) with projector equipment, teaching laboratories, study and administrative rooms.

A two-floor building attached to the CCET building (called the annex building) houses the infrastructure for PPGI-UNIRIO activities, including: a PPGI/CCET oral examination and seminars room with forty seats (with projector and video conference equipment), two classrooms (with capacity for fifteen students each), four research laboratories (three of them thematic, with about 45 workstations, servers and peripherals, organized by the research lines, and one exclusive lab for Doctorate students), a meeting room, additional professors’ offices and a space to receive postdoc researchers and visiting professors. From the beginning of the Doctorate course, an additional classroom with a capacity for fifteen students, located in room 201 of CCET, was reserved for use by PPGI.

In addition to the exclusive PPGI laboratories, the program shares the Computer Laboratories of the School of Applied Computing of the Exact Sciences and Technology Center (CCET) associated with the Bachelor of Information Systems at UNIRIO. There are three teaching laboratories (66 machines, including 12 Macintosh machines – iMacs).

Network infrastructure and Information Technology support

The university’s administrative and academic management is carried out by the Education Information System (SIE), an ERP tool with its users defined according to the access profile of each group. UNIRIO’S computing network infrastructure manages thousands of user accounts, geographically distributed across eight (8) campuses.

PPGI uses the services of both DIRIC (Information and Communication Technology Board) of UNIRIO and the NTI (Information Technology Center) that exclusively serves the CCET (Exact Sciences and Technology Center), which is responsible for maintaining the IT infrastructure used by PPGI.

All UNIRIO campuses have Wi-Fi network access which, in addition to the institutional network (UNIRIO), allows access via RNP’s Eduroam network. Access to the UNIRIO Network (wired and wireless) for visitors can be franchised by any server of the institution upon approval by specific software. In addition, CCET provides an open Wi-Fi network (UNIRIOTEC-students), in addition to its own protected network for employees.

The Unirio Network has a local network infrastructure with broadband Internet access (RedeCOMEP – RedeRIO – RNP), with a speed of 10 Gbps. All campuses are interconnected by the optical ring of the Comep Network in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with redundancy of links that can be commercial, with speeds of up to 100MB, or even by the COMEP optical ring (10 Gbps) that takes over traffic when there is interruption of the main link. The DTIC servers, which provide users with access to the several services available, have hybrid Operating Systems – OS platforms. The OSs are defined, installed, configured and made available according to the applications and requirements of each service that will be in operation. It is noteworthy that 100% of the servers allocated in the DTIC Data Center are virtual, which allows for a performance gain when accessing services and data backup and, with that, the optimization of the hardware resources of the equipment providers. In late 2019, an exclusive backup equipment (Data Domain) was acquired, which enables not only the safe storage of data, but also an increase in the performance of information retrieval in case of need. Also in 2019, UNIRIO implemented the printing outsourcing service that makes it possible to equip the different areas of UNIRIO with new multifunctional equipment, ensuring no lack of supplies and maintenance for them.

The Information Technology Center (NTI) at the CCET facilities has the purpose of meeting the high demand for IT services at the Center. This initiative is aimed at the modernization and improvement of the customer service and IT services within the academic units, considering that CCET houses courses with large demand for technological apparatus. Currently, the Center (NTI) has an IT Analyst, an IT Technician and an Administrative Technician.

The Center (NTI) Competencies are:

• Manage, expand, document and maintain the UNIRIOTEC network within the scope of the CCET;
• Implement and maintain mechanisms to guarantee 24 x 7 availability;
• Implement and operate backup policy;
• Implement, maintain and disclose the use of video conference equipment at the Center;
• Encourage the use of free software by CCET students and servers;
• Migrate, maintain and disclose the pages of the Center’s units in a standardized CMS tool;
• Provide IT service from 1st to 3rd level within the scope of CCET;
• Provide support for the installation of specific software, important to the program content of CCET courses; and
• Provide support to undergraduate, graduate and research projects related to CCET.

As its main services, it is possible to highlight:

• Internet access;
• Internet access services through WI-FI network;
• Hosting services for professors’ pages, projects, the center’s page, among others;
• Co-location services to host physical equipment for research projects of the Center’s professors (many of these pieces of equipment need to operate on a 24 × 7 basis);
• E-mail services for e-mail accounts of professors and administrative technicians of the Center in their own domain, UNIRIOTEC.BR; and
• IT technical support services for professors, servers, administrative technicians, teaching and research laboratories.

Regarding the Center’s equipment, the highlights are: more than twenty network assets (including switches, routers, among others), more than 30 passive network equipment items; more than ten low and medium performance servers; more than 300 work and research stations; and more than ten 802.11bgn Access Points, for coverage on the ground floor and second floor of the Center (where the PPGI facilities are located).

Pedagogical and Educational Affairs Center (NAPE)

The NAPE – Pedagogical and Educational Affairs Center, created in 2017, aims to work with teaching, research and extension activities, as well as assisting in the school and curricular organization of courses belonging to the UNIRIO Exact Sciences and Technology Center (CCET). In relation to the Graduate Program in Computer Science, the center operates together with the curriculum review committee of the master’s and doctoral courses, collaborating with the pedagogical aspects of the curriculum. In addition, NAPE provides assistance to students who are experiencing difficulties in staying in and/or completing the course, aiming at the joint construction of academic planning. This service has been a very important differential of our course. Nape members are employees with pedagogical training; since they are not directly involved in the academic activities of the program as professors, they are widely accepted by the students, who feel very comfortable to seek help and support from the Center staff.

Library

PPGI-UNIRIO uses the Central Library (BC), located on the same campus where we offer Master’s and Doctorate degree courses in Computer Science.

UNIRIO’S BC is the technical and administrative coordinating unit of the UNIRIO Library System and its mission is “To provide informational support for the development of Teaching, Research, Innovation and Extension activities considering all fields of activity at UNIRIO”. To this end, it covers the informational heritage and provides support to teaching and research activities by offering services and products that enable the development of university teaching, research, innovation and extension programs.

The System consists of a Central Library and seven sector units located in different neighborhoods of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Urca: Sectorial Library of the Liberal Arts Center, Sectorial Library of the Human and Social Sciences Center, Sectorial Library of the Exact Science and Technology Center; Botafogo: Sectorial Library of the Legal and Political Sciences Center; in addition to the three units of the Biological and Health Sciences Center: Sectorial Library of the Medical Course (Tijuca), Sectoral Library of the Biomedical Institute (Downtown) and Sectorial Library of Nursing and Nutrition (also in Urca). These units are in charge of providing specialized assistance to the university community at its various addresses throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The opening hours of the Central Library are from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm (12 hours uninterrupted), five days a week. The sectorial units follow the opening hours of the units where they are located. They also offer digital library services, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with open remote access (outside campuses) to all internal and external information resources (bibliography), via Rede CAFÉ and Eduroam. 24/7 contact via social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and youtube channel) is also available.

Study Spaces: Special study rooms are provided. The Central Library has two collective reading rooms, an individual study hall, 04 group study booths, a multimedia room equipped with a computer, electronic whiteboard and videoconference device, an animal sounds library, and a Rare and Special Works Room. It also offers the Eterna Laboratories, a multi-user research space for the conservation and restoration of paper, with subsequent scanning (planetary scanner), the Santander Computer Laboratory, with 15 microcomputers for users; and a special section, the Children’s Library, with an emphasis on literature. These last two services are open to the university’s external community.

Collection: The set of libraries of the university has a collection of 101,662 titles. Programs for legal deposit of works are maintained: FAPERJ, for donations, and OMT – World Tourism Organization, for purchase, as well as several subscriptions to journals (two packages of access to scientific journals with 16,765 titles available, subscriptions to 07 databases of licensed bibliographies, and 182,594 e-book licenses.

Information access services: The set of libraries at the university offers the community: web terminal for works consultation, renovation, loans and reservation services, including via mobile (SophiA software); integrated search (EDS), Institutional Repository – RI for storing and disclosing the university’s academic production, UNIRIO’S Journal Portal, Portal of Conferences and Academic Meetings held at UNIRIO, online software for the automatic generation of catalogs of theses, dissertations and final papers, as well as tutorials for using the available digital resources. Access to Capes Portal (full), Virtual Health Library (BIREME/PAHO), evidence-based health portal (Ministry of Health). Prior art research for patents, partnerships with several national and international institutions for consultation and use of specific collections. At the Central Library, we offer a voice scanner service aimed at accessibility issues for visually impaired students, and we host the Ledor Amigo project, with 02 notebooks for study at the Library.

All Library System units also provide local consultation services, a self-service scanner for making digital copies of items in the collection (under the guidance of the provisions of the Copyright Law, Law No. 9,610, of February 19, 1998), Resource sharing (COMUT), home loans, inter-library loans including international libraries, and loaning of 1,051 tablets.

Manuals and tutorials are also available – http://www.unirio.br/bibliotecacentral/tutoriais, as well as specialized training – http://www.unirio.br/bibliotecacentral/treinamentos – in digital literacy and internet access, enabling consultation of scientific and technological literature on the most diverse specialized websites; Bibliographic Standardization; Guided Tour; Alert service (disclosure of works recently added to the collection); Varied program of cultural exhibitions; and lockers.