Research Software Engineers

The Aalto Research Software Engineers (RSEs) provide specialist support regarding software, computing, and data. Research is becoming more digital and computer-dependent, and we exist to make sure all research can be successful.

We support people, without limitation to software or infrastructures. For anything related to computational research, research data, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, custom software development, workflow automation, scaling-up computing, deployment of research web services, collaborative work, reproducible research, optimization, and more, we can be the internal collaborator you need:

Our main audience is researchers of all types (including artists, research assistants, MSc thesis workers, and all PhD students), but we can also serve service staff and teachers. We don’t mainly serve student questions related to courses unless they come through our work for a course.

  • For any quick questions or consultations, drop by our online “garage” office hour, for free (anyone at Aalto)

  • Plan a longer project with us, either collaborative or delegated to us. Different Aalto units have different free thresholds, but we can always make an initial plan and/or proof of concept for free.

Contact

It’s best to talk live! Come to our online office hour (“SciComp Garage”) any workday at 13:00. You don’t even need a specific question; you can ask about a vague idea, if we are even the right place to ask, or drop by to chat about your experiences. This is also a good place to ask about larger projects with us.

See Contact RSEs for other ways to contact, including email.

Basics

Topical details

Below this point is advanced material you only need to check if you have a special interest.

About the research software engineers

Checklists

Other pages on this site: Package your software well, The Zen of Scientific computing

Team internal documents

We believe in openness, so make our procedures open. They may be out of date and are subject to change at any time. Also see the FCCI Tech seminar series for how our broader team works internally.

Other similar services

  • The University of Helsinki also has a Research Software Engineering group.

  • The CSC optimization service is essentially a RSE service, targeted to CSC/LUMI resources (but in theory can do more). They are good at low-level programming kind of things. With funding, they can also collaborate on other projects.

  • The Nvidia AI Tech Center provides free RSE services for research projects for Finnish Center for AI members (includes Aalto).