What happens when I leave Imperial

All users of RCS facilities must have a full and active Imperial account in order to access the systems. Therefore, the removal of access to RCS systems is inline with wider Imperial account deactivation and are dependent upon whether or not you are a student or staff member.

Staff

If you are a staff member, you will automatically lose access to all RCS systems as soon as you leave Imperial; please ensure that you have copied any files you need to keep to a non-Imperial location before this date. If you have data you need to share with colleagues please do so before you leave, for example by copying it to a shared location such as an RDS project or RDF-Active group space.

If you need continued access to the RCS facilities (for example to collaborate on research) after you have left the institution, your supervisor or line manager will need to ask for you to be given Visting or Honorary research status in the college; they can arrange this via your departmental ICT contact.

If you have been granted an extension to your Imperial account, you may still automatically lose access to systems such as Remote Access and will need to request access to these via the ICT service desk. If you have been de-registered from the HPC or RDS facilities, please speak to your previous RDS, RDF-Active or HPC Group owners to re-register you.

Please also see the section on home directory retention.

Student

When your main Imperial account enters the "Alumni" status but is still active, you will not automatically lose access RCS systems; however you may lose access to services such as Remote Access and will may to request access to these via the ICT service desk.

You will automatically lose access to all RCS systems once your Imperial account is fully disabled, which is typically 3 months after your account has changed to Alumni status. Please ensure that you have copied any files you need to keep to a non-Imperial location before this date. If you have data you need to share with colleagues please do so before you lose access, for example by copying it to a shared location such as an RDS project or RDF-Active group space.

If you need continued access to the RCS facilities (for example to collaborate on research) after you have left the institution, your supervisor or line manager will need to ask for you to be given Visting or Honorary research status in the college; they can arrange this via your departmental ICT contact.

If you have been granted an extension to your Imperial account, you may still automatically lose access to systems such as Remote Access and will need to request access to these via the ICT service desk. If you have been de-registered from the HPC, RDF-Active or RDS facilities, please speak to your previous RDS or HPC Group owners to re-register you.

Please also see the section on home directory retention.

Home directory retention

Six months after your Imperial account is fully disabled (meaning you no longer have access to any Imperial systems), your RCS HPC home directory becomes eligible for deletion. Since the deletion process is not automatic, the exact timing will depend on staff availability. Home directories that consume the most files and/or volume are typically prioritised for removal.

If you would like your home directory deleted as a matter of priority when you leave Imperial, please inform us by raising a ticket (see Getting Support).

I have a former staff/student whose data I wish to access

We strongly recommend you discuss any data you need to keep before the individual has left Imperial as after this time, it becomes more difficult to provide access. If there is any doubt, consider extending their Imperial account.

If the data is held in a shared space such as an RDS Project or RDF-Active group space, please contact the owner of the space for access to the files. If you are the owner of the space, please raise a ticket by following the links at our Getting Support.

We consider home directories as personal data so if you require data that is held in their home directory (and it has not yet been deleted, see the section on home directory retention), we will need explicit permission from them to provide access to the data.