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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Do Research Software Engineers and Software Engineering Researchers Speak the Same Language?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that research software engineers (RSEs) and software engineering researchers (SERs) often use different terminologies for similar concepts, creating communication challenges. To better understand these divergences, we have started investigating how software engineering fundamentals from the SER community are interpreted within the RSE community, identifying aligned concepts, knowledge gaps, and areas for potential adaptation. In conclusion, our preliminary findings reveal opportunities for mutual learning and collaboration, and our systematic methodology for terminology mapping provides a foundation for a crowdsourced extension and validation in the future.

Kehrer, Timo [Univ. of Bern (Switzerland)] (ORCID:↗
DOE OSTI2025

Quantum Software Engineering (Dagstuhl Seminar 24512)

The Dagstuhl Seminar 24512 on "Quantum Software Engineering" was held from December 15 to 20, 2024. It brought together 26 participants from industry and academia from 13 different countries, including senior and junior researchers as well as practitioners in the field of Quantum Software Engineering. The aim of the seminar was to advance software engineering methods and tools for the engineering of hybrid quantum systems by promoting personal interaction and open discussion among researchers who are already working in this emerging area of knowledge. The first day of the seminar was devoted to the topic "When software engineering meets quantum mechanics", while the second day focused on "Quantum software engineering and its challenges." During both days, 16 invited presentations were given. The rest of the seminar was organized into three working groups to address the topics "Quantum Software Design, Modelling and Architecturing", "Adaptive Hybrid Quantum Systems", and "Quantum Software Quality Assurance". The seminar was a very fruitful experience for all participants both in terms of scientific outcomes and in terms of the personal relationships that were generated to jointly address future experiences.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Giving Research Software Engineers a Larger Stage Through the Better Scientific Software Fellowship

The Better Scientific Software Fellowship (BSSwF) was launched in 2018 to foster and promote practices, processes, and tools to improve developer productivity and software sustainability of scientific codes. The BSSwF’s vision is to grow the community with practitioners, leaders, mentors, and consultants to increase the visibility of scientific software. Over the last five years, many fellowship recipients and honorable mentions have identified as research software engineers (RSEs). Furthermore, case studies from several of the program’s participants illustrate the diverse ways the BSSwF has benefited both the RSE and scientific communities. In an environment where the contributions of RSEs are too often undervalued, we believe that programs such as the BSSwF can help recognize and encourage community members to step outside of their regular commitments and expand on their work, collaborations, and ideas for a larger audience.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Research software engineering: Professionalization, roles, and identity

This report summarizes the results of a study of research software professionals based on 17 interviews conducted at U.S. national laboratories and academic institutions. The study focuses on understanding the emerging professional role of research software engineer (RSE) and examining how the history of software engineering might be relevant to the emergence of research software engineering as a professional movement. The report first uses interview data to identify several models of professional identity for research software professionals. These include dominance models in which a person strongly identifies with a single professional identity (such as RSE), and multiplicity models in which an individual sees an identity like RSE as just one facet of their overall professional role. Next, it identifies three types of work situations for software professionals at national laboratories, covering those who work in dedicated RSE organizations, those who play an integral role in large multiphysics code projects, and those who work in a more isolated capacity to provide software development support for less computationally intensive research projects. It then reviews some key ideas from the sociology of professions in the context of the software engineering profession, suggesting parallels between the current RSE professional movement and aspects of the history of software engineering. It concludes by suggesting some potential practical implications of these findings for the RSE movement and professional organizations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2014

The Hidden Job Requirements for a Software Engineer

In a world increasingly operated by computers, where innovation depends on software, the software engineer’s role is changing continuously and gaining new dimensions. In commercial software development as well as scientific research environments, the way software developers are perceived is changing, because they are more important to the business than ever before. Nowadays, their job requires skills extending beyond the regular job description posted by HR, and more is expected. To advance and thrive in their new roles, the software engineers must embrace change, and practice the themes of the new era (integration, collaboration and optimization). The challenges may be somehow intimidating for freshly graduated software engineers. Through this paper the authors hope to set them on a path for success, by helping them relinquish their fear of the unknown.

Marinovici, Maria C.↗
DOE OSTI2012

Overview of the TriBITS Lifecycle Model: Lean/Agile Software Lifecycle Model for Research-based Computational Science and Engineering Software

Software lifecycles are becoming an increasingly important issue for computational science & engineering (CSE) software. The process by which a piece of CSE software begins life as a set of research requirements and then matures into a trusted high-quality capability is both commonplace and extremely challenging. Although an implicit lifecycle is obviously being used in any effort, the challenges of this process--respecting the competing needs of research vs. production--cannot be overstated. Here we describe a proposal for a well-defined software lifecycle process based on modern Lean/Agile software engineering principles. What we propose is appropriate for many CSE software projects that are initially heavily focused on research but also are expected to eventually produce usable high-quality capabilities. The model is related to TriBITS, a build, integration and testing system, which serves as a strong foundation for this lifecycle model, and aspects of this lifecycle model are ingrained in the TriBITS system. Indeed this lifecycle process, if followed, will enable large-scale sustainable integration of many complex CSE software efforts across several institutions.

Agile↗
DOE OSTI2013

The Many Faces of a Software Engineer in a Research Community

The ability to gather, analyze and make decisions based on real world data is changing nearly every field of human endeavor. These changes are particularly challenging for software engineers working in a scientific community, designing and developing large, complex systems. To avoid the creation of a communications gap (almost a language barrier), the software engineers should possess an ‘adaptive’ skill. In the science and engineering research community, the software engineers must be responsible for more than creating mechanisms for storing and analyzing data. They must also develop a fundamental scientific and engineering understanding of the data. This paper looks at the many faces that a software engineer should have: developer, domain expert, business analyst, security expert, project manager, tester, user experience professional, etc. Observations made during work on a power-systems scientific software development are analyzed and extended to describe more generic software development projects.

agile methodologies↗
DOE OSTI2025

Research Software Engineering: Introducing a New Computing in Science & Engineering Department

Here, this article introduces the new Research Software Engineering (RSEng) department at Computing in Science & Engineering. Through a conversation with the department coeditors, we highlight why RSEng matters, how it differs from industrial software engineering, what it means to be an RSE, and the scholarly and practical questions that lie ahead. Along the way, we draw on emerging literature, case studies, and community perspectives to frame the profession and practice of RSEng within computational science and engineering.

Lamprecht, Anna-Lena [Univ. of Potsdam (Germany)] ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Research Software Engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Research software engineers (RSE) play a vital role in scientific discoveries worldwide. They lead the core development of the applications, libraries, and tools that enable today’s supercomputers to process the vast volumes of data generated from the world’s most extensive and complicated scientific instruments and facilities. This article describes the mission, culture, and practices of RSE teams at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), including their team dynamics and composition, work ethics, standard practices, and ever-evolving skill sets vital to pursuing scientific innovations and implementing novel ideas. We describe the lessons learned from specific activities that contribute to shaping the identity and growth of RSE roles at ORNL. Lastly, we provide our view for the near future on effective strategies for establishing, leading, and nurturing RSE teams and building a thriving community in collaboration with science stakeholders.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Software engineering to sustain a high-performance computing scientific application: QMCPACK

We provide an overview of the software engineering efforts and their impact in QMCPACK, a production-level ab-initio Quantum MonteCarlo open-source code targeting high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Aspects included are: (i) strategic expansion ofcontinuous integration (CI) targeting CPU, using GitHub Actions runners, and graphics processing units (GPU) in pre-exascalesystems, using self-hosted hardware; (ii) incremental reduction of memory leaks using sanitizers, (iii) incorporation of Dockercontainers for CI and reproducibility, and (iv) refactoring efforts to improve maintainability, testing coverage, and memory lifetime management. We quantify the value of these improvements by providing metrics to illustrate the shift towards a predictive, rather than reactive, sustainable maintenance approach. Our goal, in documenting the impact of these efforts on QMCPACK, is to contribute to the body of knowledge on the importance of research software engineering (RSE) for the sustainability of community HPC codes and scientific discovery at scale.

Godoy, William↗
DOE OSTI2015

The Future of Software Engineering for High Performance Computing

DOE ASCR requested that from May through mid-July 2015 a study group identify issues and recommend solutions from a software engineering perspective transitioning into the next generation of High Performance Computing. The approach used was to ask some of the DOE complex experts who will be responsible for doing this work to contribute to the study group. The technique used was to solicit elevator speeches: a short and concise write up done as if the author was a speaker with only a few minutes to convince a decision maker of their top issues. Pages 2-18 contain the original texts of the contributed elevator speeches and end notes identifying the 20 contributors. The study group also ranked the importance of each topic, and those scores are displayed with each topic heading. A perfect score (and highest priority) is three, two is medium priority, and one is lowest priority. The highest scoring topic areas were software engineering and testing resources; the lowest scoring area was compliance to DOE standards. The following two paragraphs are an elevator speech summarizing the contributed elevator speeches. Each sentence or phrase in the summary is hyperlinked to its source via a numeral embedded in the text. A risk one liner has also been added to each topic to allow future risk tracking and mitigation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modern Software Engineering and Research [Slides]

The goals of this teaching workshop are for the learners to leave with a broad view of University curriculum, successes and limitations, and the state of industry; an awareness of grand challenges in software engineering; and an awareness of current approaches to address those challenges.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Experience Paper: Software Engineering and Community Codes Track in ATPESC

Argonne Training Program in Extreme Scale Computing (ATPESC) was started by the Argonne National Laboratory with the objective of expanding the ranks of better prepared users of high performance computing (HPC) machines. One of the unique aspects of the program was inclusion of software engineering and community codes track. The inclusion was motivated by the observation that the projects with a good scientific and software process were better able to meet their scientific goals. In this paper we present our experience of running the software track from the beginning of the program until now. We discuss the motivations, the reception, and the evolution of the track over the years. We welcome discussion and input from the community to enhance the track in ATPESC, and also to facilitate inclusion of similar tracks in other HPC oriented training programs.

Dubey, Anshu↗
DOE OSTI2021

Research Software Engineering Efforts for DataFlow: FY2021 Developments

DataFlow is a web application that helps scientific data to flow from one source location to another destination location. DataFlow helps scientists easily capture scientific metadata associated with an experiment and transmit both metadata and experimental data to a designated, centralized data storage resource. This report describes the software engineering efforts and architecture of the project for the fiscal year 2021 developments. We hope it effectively communicates findings from our work, challenges we have overcome, and how we will continue our development of DataFlow in the future.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Alfalfa Virtual Building Service: Software Engineering Best Practices Applied to Runtime Interaction with Building Energy Models

Buildings are active participants in increasingly complex energy systems. Building Energy Modeling (BEM) has a key role to play in planning and de-risking an equitable energy transition, with BEM-backed "virtual buildings" critical path for diverse applications that include workforce training tools, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) experimentation to study equipment performance under a range of conditions, Control-Hardware-in-the-Loop (CHIL) experimentation to de-risk commercial control implementations at equipment through grid orchestration levels, and integration of dynamic load profiles into grid modeling tools for energy system experimentation at the urban scale. Modeling requirements vary across these applications, but many software engineering tasks do not. The Alfalfa Virtual Building Service (AVBS, see https://github.com/NREL/alfalfa/wiki) is an open-source web service that solves these common tasks robustly in one place, providing a foundational platform for power users to bootstrap their own applications. AVBS abstracts the specifics of runtime interaction with OpenStudio, Modelica, and Spawn of EnergyPlus models behind a unified REST API. Additionally, AVBS provides resources for cloud deployment and scaling to 100s of parallel simulations, a growing library of modular Operational Technology (OT) integrations for emulation of real-world interfaces, and scripts to automate the population of communities of virtual buildings from URBANopt, ResStock and ComStock.

building automation↗