CASUS Professional Support Team

Software engineers form the CASUS Professional Support Team from diverse scientific backgrounds, including computer science, data science, and physics. With this team, the CASUS institute provides an appropriate setting for the sustainable and long-term development of scientific software, rather than being bound to the lifetime and funding of single projects. For a digital institute focused on a cross-domain exploration of complex systems – often only possible by computational means – putting software engineering at eye level with research ensures a reliable base of high-quality software. We emphasize open-source solutions, reusability, documentation, and portability, as well as on F.A.I.R. data. The Professional Support Team is involved in numerous in-house and cross-institutional projects: The scientific Python packages MALA and atoMEC are supported in the long term by code reviews, documentation generation, package management and continuous integration. The performance-portability framework Alpaka has given established physics simulations such as PIConGPU the chance to port to next-gen Exascale HPC systems such as ORNL Frontier. It is also used by emerging simulation and data analysis projects at CERN. The pandemic research platform Where2Test consists of several web applications linked to a central database containing current epidemiologic data. Predictions calculated on the HPC cluster are automatically post-processed and published online. Open software attracts collaboration, as the scientific I/O library openPMD-api shows, developed in collaboration between CASUS and LBNL and used by numerous scientific projects in Europe and America. With OPTIMA and PIONEER cloud-based platforms, the CASUS institute provides data access and analytic capabilities for researchers and pharmaceutical companies in a federated way. The poster shows the diverse skills found within the Professional Support Team, representing the interdisciplinary nature of CASUS, and briefly introduces the projects our team is involved in.