Case studies

As we complete work with projects, we will write up each project as a case study. The case studies are short, focussed on achievements and easily the best way in which to see the kind of work that we do - and how we could work with your project. If you would like to discuss working with the Software Sustainability Institute, please contact us.

Infrastructure and project management

• Preparing ICAT for thousands of new users: data being generated by today’s large-scale scientific research projects will remain available, searchable and usable in future, thanks to the ICAT project.

• A checklist for using the Cloud in research: researchers now have a straightforward checklist to help them decide whether cloud computing can help them with their work.

• Helping a research project transform into a business service: since implementing changes suggested by the Software Sustainability Institute, the JournalTOCs website has seen usage triple, and turnover pass £100,000

• Achieving unexpected goals from an ambitious social science project
  Part of the magic of bringing people together in multi-team projects is the unexpected things that spark off from their work together — often not at all what was planned or expected, but no less worthwhile for that.

Software engineering

• Improving climate modelling and making it accessible to new users: making completely new types of climate simulation possible, increasing throughput rates, and providing visualisation tools to help scientists better interpret their results and more easily explain them to others
   
• Helping visualise what happens inside a nuclear reactor: it is now straightforward for researchers at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) to visualise what happens inside a nuclear fusion reactor.
   
• Astonishingly fast fitting of models to big datasets: we developed a code framework, initially used for astronomy, so that it had the flexibility to be quickly adaptated to new problems, such as medical imaging.
   
• Better software and better software management - even across a distributed team: "I found working with the Software Sustainability Institute helped me to develop my own project management skills, in particular I was very pleased with the task specification process and have adopted a similar process for other aspects of the project." - Chris Rogers, MICE Physics Software Manager.
   
• Helping to tame the OGSA-DAI Workbench: we made it easier to use OGSA-DAI by creating an intuitive user interface and providing the software preconfigured on a virtual machine, we also made use of a new Eclipse framework that makes it easier to develop and extend the software.

Software evaluation

• Helping surgeons to adopt software: "the evaluation was invaluable in identifying and addressing very important aspects within the project for sustainability of the software" - Gary Wills, Project Manager, VRIC.

Building communities

• Ensuring a future for the digital arts and humanities community: Our work has ensured the long term future of a major website for the arts and humanities community.
  
  Analysing texts in digital archives: humanities researchers can now easily install and deploy the TextVRE software, allowing them to process and analyse research texts that are held in metadata-rich digital archives.
   
• Making High Performance Computing resources more accessible: bioinformatics researchers using SPRINT (Simple Parallel R INTerface) now have access to quality resources and support, helping them to work with the High Performance Computing services they need for their work.
   
• Making software available to new users: "The Software Sustainability Institute provided all that experience and turned what had been an extremely painful process into a highly productive and rewarding one." - Professor Joanna Wardlaw, Director, Brain Research Imaging Centre.

Reviews

We can review your case studies and make suggestions about how to improve them. If you are interested in this service, please info [at] software [dot] ac [dot] uk (get in touch).