For researchers and research groups

You program or analyze data in your daily work, and you know something is missing: your code and data is less organized, less efficient, less managed than others, and it’s affecting the quality of your work. Or maybe you don’t know how to start your project, or publish it. You’re too busy with the science to have time to focus on the computing.

To find out more or make a request, contact us.

Garage support

Aalto recognizes the importance of researchers in every field being able to use scientific computing competently, so our basic expertise is available to everyone.

The SciComp garage is a daily online office hour where anyone can ask us anything. This is a great way to un-stick any small problems that you may have. Sometimes, we can work for a few hours or days outside the garage.

Projects

If a project lasts more than a few days, we will work with you to make a plan for a longer project. We need to get on the same page and confirm we have the time. Member units provide funding for their projects (most for “free” under a month).

To get started this way, it’s still best to join the garage and request help.

How to contact us and request help

To request a service, see the request area.

Examples

Note

Master’s and Bachelor’s students

The RSE service is intended for researchers, but students can be researchers if they are involved in a research project. To get started on anything longer than a short consultation, we would need to meet with your supervisor. (We can arrange help of courses if the course instructors contact us).

Case studies

Case study: preparation for publication

A group is about to publish a paper about a method, but their code is a bit messy. Without easy-to-use, (relatively) high-quality code, they know their impact will be minimal. They invest in a few days of RSE work in order to help adopt best practices and release their method as open source.

Case study: external grant

A PI has gotten a large external grant, and as part of that they need some software development expertise. The time frame is four months, but they can’t hire a top-quality person on an academic salary for that short time. They contact the Aalto RSE group (either before the grant, or while it is running) and use our speciality for four days per week.

Case study: improve workflow

A group of researchers all works on similar things, but independently since their backgrounds have been in science, not software development. They invite the RSE for a quick consultation to help them get set up with version control and show a more modular way to structure their code, so they can start some real collaborations, not just talking. This is the first step to more impact (and open science) from their work.

Case study: sustainability of finished projects

A project has ended and the main person who managed the code/analysis pipeline has left to continue their career somewhere else. You wish to replicate and extend the previous work, but your only starting point is a folder with hundreds of files and no clear instructions/documentation. Aalto RSEs can help you re-using and recycling previous code, document it, and extend it to make it more sustainable to be reused in future projects.

Case study: outreach and impact

ChatGPT wasn’t in the news just because it was good - it’s because it had an excellent interface for the public to test it. Developing and running these services requires a different set of skills than research, and Aalto RSEs can help to make and deploy these services.

Short-term examples

Format could be personal work, lecture, or group seminar followed by a hands-on session, for example.

  • Setting up a project in version control with all the features. This also includes version control of data.

  • Preparing code or data for release and publication

  • FAIR data (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) - consultation and help.

  • Creating or automating a workflow, especially those processing data or running simulations

  • Optimizing some code - both for speed and/or adaptability

  • Efficiency storing data for intensive analysis. Data replication and management.

  • Making existing software more modular and reusable

  • Help properly using, for example, machine learning library pipelines, instead of hacking things together yourself

  • Setting up automatic software testing

  • Transforming projects from individual to collaborative - either within a group, or open source.

  • Generalized “code clean-up” which takes a project from development to stabilized

More involved examples

These would combine co-working, mentoring, and independent work. We go to you and work with you.

  • Developing or maintaining specific software, services, demos, or implementations.

  • Software development as a service

  • Software support that lasts beyond the time frame of a single student’s attention

  • Adding features to existing software

  • Contributing to some other open source software you need for your research