Software for Science

CANCELLED
Due to the global coronavirus outbreak, the AUAS summer school 2020 has been cancelled. We hope to offer this course in 2021. Check amsterdamuas.com/summerschool or subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.

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The summer course Software for Science offers team assignments for developing software for scientific experiments. You will learn best practices for scientific programming and execute them in projects for renowned scientific institutes. The research topics are related to particle physics, (radio-)astronomy and university research. The following are a typical list of topics which are the background for the team project selection:

CERN-ALICE

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of the seven detectors making use of CERN’s Large Hydron Collider (LHC) and developed for the collision of Pb-Pb (lead to lead) ions. Collisions produce a so-called Quark-Gluon Plasma, which is assumed to have existed less than one second after the Big Bang. As of May 2017, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) is an associate member of the ALICE collaboration and works on the following projects:

- Electronic logbook

The data produced by ALICE is reconstructed, calibrated and analysed. Everything that happens to this data is being registered. The AUAS is developing a bookkeeping system for all the data generated by the detector and for all the data that describes the behaviour of the detector. To achieve this, a front end and a back end must be created. Also, the logging of processing is of interest.

- Load balancing and monitoring

The enormous number of particles generates a data stream of approximately 1.1 Terabyte per second received by 268 computers and distributed to 1500 computers. We are looking for adequate algorithms for load balancing at ALICE and to monitor ALICE applications for use in the operator room.

ASTRON SKA

ASTRON directs several experiments from its headquarters in Dwingeloo (a village in Holland) and is collaborating in a new international project to create the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). This project combines telescopes in South Africa and Australia, creating a larger apparatus to detect radio waves from the Universe.

- Monitoring energy consumption

 Computing the enormous amount of data produced by SKA costs an exorbitant amount of money. To minimise this, a close watch should be kept on energy consumption.

- Visualising high-dimensional astronomy data sets

Using large publicly available datasets (e.g. resulting from Gaia) research can be performed optimizing options to explore their data more effectively.

eScience Center

The Netherlands eScience Center  supports research at universities in the Netherlands. In support, software research was executed on the following optics:

- Pulsar detection

To detect pulsars, i.e. very fast rotating neutrino stars, software has been developed that has to be re-engineered.

- Point cloud data

The ruins of many burial buildings are located along the Via Appia (Rome-Brindisi) for which point cloud data is available. To virtually reconstruct these monuments, a 4D-visualisation of artefacts will be created.