Case studies

We work with a wide range of projects, helping them to improve their software sustainability. Read the case studies below to get a flavour of how we can help.

If you would like to discuss working with the Software Sustainability Institute, please contact us.

Infrastructure and project management

• Overcoming support and maintenance challenges for established Distance Sampling software: the Distance team can now  automatically test itsanimal population software, and  improve the reorganisation of itscodes, reducing the time between publishing and implementing new analytical methods.

• Biofuel research potential grows with updated software: an innovative means of modelling biofuel yields almost came to grief due to software and hardware limitations, until the Institute helped it to reach its potential.

• Software Hub - a central resource for Jisc software: Jisc needed a way to store and distribute legacy code to make it more accessible. With the Institute's help, it was able to create new waysof metadata tagging and cataloguing data.

• Flexible working on crystal structure modelling: bringing together disparate crystallography software to produce a stable version.

• Preparing musculoskeletal software for public release: the team at Imperial College’s Musculoskeletal Mechanics Group needed help preparing itssoftware for a public release.

• Preparing ICAT for thousands of new users: data 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: a straightforward checklist to help researchers decide whether cloud computing can help them.

• Helping a research project transform into a business service: since implementing changes suggested by the 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.

Software engineering

• Improving portability for computational genomics analysis and training software: making it easier for researchers to use the CGAT tools in their own environments.

• Building a firm foundation for solid mechanics software: we made it easier for new users to evaluate the ParaFEM software library and verify its installation on complex HPC systems.

• Improved code for ARCHER hits the target: the Institute helped to make the TPLS computational fluid dynamics code more accessible to developers for deployment on ARCHER.

• Making fMRI imaging software more accessible and easier to use: increasing the modularity, maintainability and testability of the FABBER imaging software was critical to broadening its community of developers.

• Improving the development of popular bone analysis software: Michael Doube developed software so popular that he couldn't meet the demands of his community. The Institute helped to manage and develop his software.

• Getting to grips with molecules: the Institute helped turn a one-man software project into a successful multi-developer programme that is transforming research into molecular binding.

• 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 and explain their results.

• 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, with the flexibility to be quickly adapted 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. Aa new Eclipse framework alsomakes 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

• Whatever the weather: the story behind MONC: The Institute’s assistance in developing training materials and a MONC virtual machine was, according to the team, "fundamental to the role of MONC to the community" and "immensely beneficial".

• Improving laboratory mobile app software for wider uptake: Labbook is able to store, save and curate research notes, images and diagrams. The Institute helped in mentoring the developers and ensuring they can bring Labbook to a wider audience.

• Studying circadian rhythms in plants and insects: biologists can now study circadian rhythms in plants and insects without fear of their software crashing.

• 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 to process and analyse research texts held in metadata-rich digital archives.

• Making High Performance Computing resources more accessible: bioinformatics researchers now have access to resources and support for work with High Performance Computing services.

• 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

Short, focussed case studies are a great way to show your work. We can review your case studies and make suggestions about how to improve them. If you are interested in this service, please get in touch.