For Students & Researchers

Your ideas shouldn't be limited by where you are

Every discovery starts with curiosity. Every learning journey starts with the chance to explore.

Researchers and students need the freedom to follow an idea, test a theory, learn something new – and connect with the people, data and tools that can take their work further.

Federated access makes those connections possible. Using the login you already have, you can securely reach research infrastructure and resources across institutional and national boundaries – without creating a new account for every service.

secure logins every year people connected Australian universities % network availability*

99.9% network availability *add specifics in here? Is there a recent report to back this up?

AAF puts you inside one of Australia’s most trusted and widely used identity networks.

The same infrastructure supports both organisations and individuals. And it’s working at scale every day.

Benefits for you

Federated access changes how you get into the tools you need, how secure that is, and how much of your time it takes.

Connected to a bigger research world
AAF connects you to Australia’s shared research facilities, platforms and eResearch services.
Through eduGAIN, it also links you to thousands of services worldwide. Working with colleagues at other universities or overseas institutions becomes simple, so your research and study isn’t limited by where you’re based.
Access to the data and tools that matter
Because your identity is verified by your institution, you can be approved for protected datasets, high-performancecomputing and controlled research environments.
This access opens up the kind of work, like sensitive health and genomics research, that can’t happen without trusted systems in place.
An identity that moves with you
Whether you’re changing institutions, joining a multi-institution project or moving from student to researcher, your trusted identity comes with you.
It supports every stage of your learning and research, from your first degree through to a career in research.
Your identity and privacy, protected
Sign-in is handled by your own institution and backed by security controls like multi-factor authentication.
Only the information a service actually needs is shared with it. Your personal details stay with you and your institution, not scattered across every platform you use.
Work from anywhere
On campus, at home, travelling or out in the field, you can reach the services you need wherever your work takes you.
One login, straight to work
Use the university credentials you already have to get into repositories, cloud platforms, data collections, virtual labs and software.
There are no new accounts or registration forms, so you spend more time on learning and research, and less time on admin.

Learning requires limitless access to digital resources

One login, a world of research and learning resources.

From journals and lab archives to national environmental data and high-performance computing. This is just a snapshot of what can be connected through the AAF network.

Every connection can be seen as a trust problem. But it doesn’t have to be.

Research doesn’t always happen inside one institution.

Picture a cancer genomics researcher who needs national compute, genomic records held by three separate institutes. Picture her collaborator, on another continent. With an analysis that keeps running long after she’s gone home.

Every one of those boundaries is usually a problem, tackled one at a time:

another integration

another account

another approval

another copy of someone’s personal details held by yet another service.

The AAF solves that trust problem at scale, opening up the kind of limitless potential that research is supposed to have.

Services

Explore the AAF services working behind the scenes to connect students and researchers across multiple sectors:

Federation
The trust framework behind every secure, seamless login.
The Federation
eduGAIN
Extends trusted access to research and education communities and organisations worldwide.
Australian ORCID Consortium
Australia’s national program giving every researcher a persistent identifier, recognised across institutions, funders and platforms.
Australian ORCID Consortium