For various reasons, the Linux Lab machines need to stay on CentOS 7. However some software may require a more up-to-date compiler than that distro provides.
This can be accomplished by running your shell under the devtoolset-7 software collection:
$ which gcc /usr/bin/gcc $ gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-36) ... $ scl enable devtoolset-7 "$SHELL" $ which gcc /opt/rh/devtoolset-7/root/usr/bin/gcc $ gcc --version gcc (GCC) 7.3.1 20180303 (Red Hat 7.3.1-5) ... $
And then compile (and possibly use) the software under that shell.