Seminar Details

The Research Software Engineering (RSE) group, housed within the central Research Computing Department at Princeton University, strives to create efficient, scalable, and sustainable research code in order to enable and accelerate new scientific advances. We do this by working as an integral part of traditional academic research groups, providing leadership in the design and construction of complex and highly customized software systems. In this talk, I will begin with an overview of some of the problems facing researchers developing software and how Research Software Engineers can help. I’ll describe how the Princeton RSE group originated and is differentiated from other, more traditional, Research Computing efforts. I’ll give examples of the wide breadth of recent RSE projects, ranging from highly-scalable astrophysics HPC applications, to statistical modeling software for social science research, to neuroscience imaging experiments. I will share some simple, time-tested, practices and approaches for writing better scientific software that can have long term impacts on sustainability and developer productivity. Finally, I will also touch on training – a key aspect of the RSE group’s activities – which takes the form of mini-courses offered year round and the recent introduction of a 4-day computing bootcamp.