The Research Software Development Team (RSDT)

Yes, our services include revamping existing programmes, that can include usability improvement, security, adding new features, re-engineering etc. We encourage reusability and therefore our team not only provides support for development but also help with proper documentation and code sharing.

The team provides training for the proper use of existing resources at CANARIE and the Digital research infrastructure. Our Senior Scientific Computing Specialist organizes monthly seminars about a wide range of high-performance computing techniques and is geared toward researchers.

Additionally, we aim to provide training and consultations to the researcher teams willing to gain knowledge in software development, specifically with best practices for quick code organization and deployment such as Git usage, documentation, package development, and working with metadata.

The team organizes a Call for Proposals every year. We open a form that seeks proposals for research software development. Your proposal can be for existing software or a new idea. Upon reaching the deadline, the proposals are then evaluated by a special evaluation committee that is a team of researchers, professors, and subject matter experts (SMEs). The evaluations are based on various criteria that are shared with the applicants during the call. The projects that fall under our capacity for that year are shortlisted, and the intake begins involving consultations with the researcher’s team to understand the needs better.

The number of projects would depend on how large the projects are and how we can combine multiple projects that could benefit from the same developed software. If the research team has students or assistants that can code, the RSDT can support their projects by offering consulting services or helping through the Community of Practices.  

The ELR is flexible to work within the research team to ensure that the requirements are well understood. Project evaluation and selection is based on criteria that help us identify project requirements and assign software developers based on the evaluation. We recommend standards while promoting a collaborative work environment, allowing researchers to have flexibility in terms of language, architecture, etc. 

The team promotes access to software that can be reused by other groups, and therefore, we encourage open access to resources and software programs.  We work on open-source packages that leverage open libraries and make them available to the larger research community.

Our developers are skilled in a wide range of technologies, from high-performance computing to the web. They can code in various languages such as R, Python, C++, PHP, JavaScript and adapt to new ones. The versatile team comprises Analysts and developers who are well-versed with agile methodologies to ensure that the entire cycle of software engineering is implemented that includes the requirement gathering, setting up automated testing, Operating system, and hardware.