Posted by s.hettrick on 9 October 2012 - 12:08pm

Research is increasingly digital. Experimentation and theory have been joined by the third and fourth paradigms of science – numerical simulation and information-intensive research. These new approaches are both built on a common foundation – computer software. Yet despite this increasing reliance on software in research, software created in research institutions often exhibits a number of characteristic flaws.

Universities need to provide a capacity for research software development, serviced by experts who combine professional software development skills with the ability to rapidly and deeply assimilate academic literature, and address in software design, construction and maintenance the requirements of research at the frontiers of knowledge. James Hetherington's new Research Software Development Team, based at UCL, will work with researchers who create code at UCL to increase the university’s capacity to produce the highest quality scientific software, from the simplest scripts managing scientific data to complex simulations running on state of the art computational platforms.

To read more about the Research Software Development Team, visit their blog.