Starting a project (group leader info)
You, or someone in your group, has requested Research Software Engineer services for one of your group’s projects. This service provides specialist support for software, data, and open science so that you can focus on the science that is interesting to you. You probably have some questions about what this is, and this page will answer those practical questions. For researchers using our services, also see Project lifecycle.
To contact us, see Contact RSEs.
How it is funded
Short term (a few weeks or less) is funded by your department, if you are in one of the sponsoring units. You don’t need to do anything special.
Longer term (month or more) is funded from your own projects. See the information for grant applicants, it is also relevant if you already have funding you want to use.
You can use our services for both a specific project, or generally have us around on retainer to support all of your projects (for example, 20% time for a year). If you are applying for a new grant, see For grant applicants.
Keystone projects are long, major project sponsored by units. Apply for these either through the unit or through our normal means. The unit decides which keystone projects it supports.
Project planning meeting
We’ll try to have a planning meeting to start the project at the beginning. We’ll talk about what needs to be done, what the goals are, who does what, risks and risk management, and long-term maintenance. This should be written in some sort of shared doc that everyone can view and edit (ideally wherever your group normally stores such things, like OneDrive or Google Drive).
Access to data and tools
Our goal is not to come in, wave our hands, and leave you with something unusable. Instead, we want to come in and set you up to work yourself in the future. Thus, (if it’s necessary) we’ll want the same access to your group’s data/workspace/tools as you have.
This access is removed after the project is finished. We will try to remember this, but sometimes projects drag on with no clear ending (or you want long-term consultation), so you should also pay attention to this. Out of principle (+ policies), we access the data the same as a normal researcher would.
NDAs, intellectual property, etc.
The RSE staff are Aalto employees and are automatically bound to confidentiality, and have signed the same extra confidentiality agreement that Aalto IT system administrators have, and are similarly vetted.
Using our services doesn’t affect your intellectual property right any more than another employee working on the project will. (In the event you don’t plan for open science / open licenses, it should be planned first, though, to make sure everything gets taken care of.) However, our RSEs expect to be acknowledged according to good scientific practice (see Project lifecycle).