GSB Research Computing & AI Skills
A four-day, hands-on introduction to research computing and AI tools for Stanford GSB researchers: the command line, the Yens cluster, Python and LLM APIs, SLURM batch jobs, GPUs, and AI coding tools.
Prerequisites
You can read the site and track your progress with nothing installed. To do the hands-on work, you’ll need a few things set up — your instructor can help with any of these in class:
- A Claude account. Stanford provides Claude for Education, free for most people. Request access at uit.stanford.edu/service/claude.
- Terminal access. On macOS, use the built-in Terminal app. On Windows, install Git Bash and open it from the Start menu.
- A GitHub account. Free — sign up if you don’t already have one.
- Access to the Yen servers. Stanford GSB’s research cluster. Faculty, PhD students, post-docs, and research fellows have access by default; others need a SUNet ID and faculty sponsorship. See Access the Yens on RCpedia.
When you’re set up and ready, put a 🟢 green sticky on your laptop lid. If you get stuck on anything, put up a 🔴 red sticky so an instructor can come help.
The Four Days
CLI · SSH · Yens file system · Git
JupyterHub · Python envs · AI Playground · Secure key management · Pydantic · AI agents & data privacy
SLURM · Resource estimation · Job lifecycle · Job monitoring
Job arrays · GPU tiers · Local LLMs · OpenAI-compatible API · LLM failure modes