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Mr N Chue Hong
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
Software underpins the majority of current research. However relatively little research has been undertaken to identify how different software engineering approaches are used or may apply in the development of software within universities and research organisations, where incentives and practices are different from industry.
A PhD project in this area would be expected to look at gathering empirical data to investigate hypotheses around differences in practice, efficiency of approaches, understanding of incentives, or categorisation of project types and practices based on maturity of the software and its funding.
Some of the specific challenges that our current work has identified which could be tackled in this research project include, but are not limited to:
1. What software engineering techniques that are prevalent in industry (e.g. code review, version control) transfer best (i.e. how much they end up being used) to research software projects?
2. Does the efficacy of different software engineering techniques depend primarily on the maturity of the project, the experience of the team, or the incentives given to use the technique?
3. Does the mechanism for knowledge transfer (e.g. pointer to generic guidance, specific guidance, walkthrough, mentoring) have an effect on the uptake of the technique?
4. How well do existing task estimation models (e.g. COCOMO) work for research software development?
5. How could we create a machine actionable Software Management Plan, and how might that evolve through a project’s lifecycle?
Candidate requirements:
Applicants should have a good degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science or related discipline. They should have experience of software development in an academic or industrial context. It is desirable, but not essential, for the candidate to have some prior experience of empirical software engineering techniques, data analysis (e.g. in R or Python/PANDAS), and interview/survey based work.
About The Centre:
As a PhD student you would be based at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), part of the University of Edinburgh. Founded in 1990, EPCC has been involved in parallel computing since the early days and is a leading European centre of excellence in advanced research, technology transfer and the provision of high-performance computing services to academia and industry. Based at The University of Edinburgh, we are one of Europe’s leading supercomputing centres. EPCC also leads the Software Sustainability Institute, which has collaborators from across the UK and internationally in the field of studying research software.
How to apply and request further information:
In order to apply for this PhD or request further information you should contact the supervisor, Neil Chue Hong, by using the form on this website.
A PhD project in this area would be expected to look at gathering empirical data to investigate hypotheses around differences in practice, efficiency of approaches, understanding of incentives, or categorisation of project types and practices based on maturity of the software and its funding.
Some of the specific challenges that our current work has identified which could be tackled in this research project include, but are not limited to:
1. What software engineering techniques that are prevalent in industry (e.g. code review, version control) transfer best (i.e. how much they end up being used) to research software projects?
2. Does the efficacy of different software engineering techniques depend primarily on the maturity of the project, the experience of the team, or the incentives given to use the technique?
3. Does the mechanism for knowledge transfer (e.g. pointer to generic guidance, specific guidance, walkthrough, mentoring) have an effect on the uptake of the technique?
4. How well do existing task estimation models (e.g. COCOMO) work for research software development?
5. How could we create a machine actionable Software Management Plan, and how might that evolve through a project’s lifecycle?
Candidate requirements:
Applicants should have a good degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science or related discipline. They should have experience of software development in an academic or industrial context. It is desirable, but not essential, for the candidate to have some prior experience of empirical software engineering techniques, data analysis (e.g. in R or Python/PANDAS), and interview/survey based work.
About The Centre:
As a PhD student you would be based at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), part of the University of Edinburgh. Founded in 1990, EPCC has been involved in parallel computing since the early days and is a leading European centre of excellence in advanced research, technology transfer and the provision of high-performance computing services to academia and industry. Based at The University of Edinburgh, we are one of Europe’s leading supercomputing centres. EPCC also leads the Software Sustainability Institute, which has collaborators from across the UK and internationally in the field of studying research software.
How to apply and request further information:
In order to apply for this PhD or request further information you should contact the supervisor, Neil Chue Hong, by using the form on this website.
Funding Notes
To be eligible for funding covering both fees and stipend, students must be UK nationals, or EU nationals who have been resident in the UK for at least 3 years before commencing the studentship. For further details, see EPCC's Scholarship and Funding page: https://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/education-training/phd/scholarships-funding
Students must be available to commence their studies on or before 1st April 2018.
Students must be available to commence their studies on or before 1st April 2018.
References
Howison, J., and Herbsleb, J. D. (2013). Incentives and integration in scientific software production. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 459–470). San Antonio, TX. doi:10.1145/2441776.2441828
Wienke, Sandra et al (2016). Development Effort Estimation in HPC. In SC '16: Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/SC.2016.9
Brett, Alys, Croucher, Michael, Haines, Robert, Hettrick, Simon, Hetherington, James, Stillwell, Mark, & Wyatt, Claire. (2017). Research Software Engineers: State of the Nation Report 2017. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.495360
Wienke, Sandra et al (2016). Development Effort Estimation in HPC. In SC '16: Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/SC.2016.9
Brett, Alys, Croucher, Michael, Haines, Robert, Hettrick, Simon, Hetherington, James, Stillwell, Mark, & Wyatt, Claire. (2017). Research Software Engineers: State of the Nation Report 2017. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.495360
Project supervisors
Career overview
Neil Chue Hong holds a Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice and is the Principal Investigator and Founding Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, a national facility established in 2010 for research software users and developers, aimed at cultivating better and more sustainable research software to enable world-class research. Their research focuses on improving software developed for research through the application of software engineering practices and the development of communities, policies, and incentives. They have advised on large-scale investments in Digital Research Infrastructure, serving as the current Chair of the SPF UKRI/Met Office ExCALIBUR Steering Committee and holding memberships on various advisory boards including the BBSRC Transformative Technologies SAP and the NERC Digital Research Infrastructure Investment Board. Chue Hong is a co-author of significant publications such as 'Best Practices for Scientific Computing' and 'An Open Science Peer Reviewers Oath,' and they have organised the Software Engineering for Science workshop series. They served as Director of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII-UK) from 2007 to 2010, where they supported free, open-source software for the UK e-Research community. Their earlier career included roles at EPCC as a technology transfer consultant and Project Manager for various data access and integration projects. Chue Hong graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MPhys in Computational Physics.
Research interests
Neil Chue Hong's research focuses on community engagement and development, software sustainability, and the research software ecosystem. They work with research communities across the UK and globally to promote and enable the improvement of important research software through consultative advice, collaborative partnerships, and long-term engagement. Their interests include the application of software engineering practices to enhance research software and the development of policies and incentives to support this improvement.
Research Software Policy
Software Sustainability
Software Engineering Practices
Research Software Ecosystem
Community Engagement
Digital Research Infrastructure
Open Science
Scientific Computing
e-Research
High Performance Computing
Data Integration
Environmental Omics
Research Data Management
Collaborative Partnerships
Research Communities
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