Research Software Engineering group
The University of Helsinki (UH) Research Software Engineering (RSE) group provide support for research software development and efficient and scaled use of data and computing resources.
As more research leverages computers to a greater and greater degree, it has become harder and harder for researchers to keep abreast of both their own research field as well as develop sufficient know-how develop complex software systems. RSEs at the University of Helsinki and elsewhere help plug this gap through consultations and trainings on the one hand, and direct collaboration and custom software development within research projects on the other.
We are part of UH's specialist and support services staff, and operate within the Center for Information Technology, meaning our remit extends to the entire university.
Our main contact point is our RSE garages (login required), biweekly help sessions where we can offer direct help including for example:
- Assistance debugging and troubleshooting code: both your own and third party libraries
- Help structuring your software projects and workflows
- Advice on making your code run faster or make use of computing cluster resources
- Helping to navigate choices of tools and libraries for your project
In cases where its beneficial, we RSEs may provide direct help. This help can sometimes take a more limited scope, such as writing or modifying parts of a script for a particular purpose. In other cases, an RSE may join your project as a medium-term term collaborator. In this case some examples of the type of role we can take include:
- Software archaeology: helping to renovate old code for continued use or reuse in a new context
- Helping release software as a reuseable/documented open source project
- Benchmarking and optimising code; scaling code to a cluster enabling it to make use of GPUs
- Making software or datasets more reproducible
The pilot phase of the UH RSE programme is funded by the LUMI AI Factory Project.
LUMI AI Factory is supported by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and its members including top-up funding by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
