Research software forms the crux of research in almost all existing computational science research domains, as well as new and emerging domains such as quantum computing to artificial intelligence. Disruptive technologies at hardware levels have necessitated the need of cross-cutting scientific software. Along with robust design and scalable, high-performing implementations, key factors for the longevity of such scientific software are software quality, sustainability, as well as software and team productivity. Well-defined techniques, processes, as well as the knowledge and expertise of scientists and research software engineers (RSEs), applied during the software lifetime have become critical components of ensuring a highly productive software environment. These topics demand a more urgent and serious investment in scientific software development and in the teams developing that software. In this minisymposium, we aim to tackle some of the challenges existing in these focus areas. We will share the diverse experiences of experts working with scientific software and medium/large project teams who have achieved successes in these areas. The goal is to inspire the community to be cognizant of developments taking place and to realign, focus and take action, within their own teams and organizations, to address concerns plaguing software sustainability, quality and productivity in scientific computational computing today.

Presenters

• Rinku Gupta (Argonne National Laboratory)
• Ben van Werkhoven (Netherlands eScience Center)
• Rene Caspart (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
• Shyamali Mukherjee (Sandia National Laboratories)
• Daniel S. Katz (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Andrew Turner (University of Edinburgh)
• Claire Wyatt (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)
• Anne Fouilloux (Simula Research Laboratory)

Organizers

• Rinku Gupta (Argonne National Laboratory)
• Simon Hettrick (University of Southampton)
• Daniel S. Katz (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Robert Speck (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)