Computational Science

Mission statement

We are the method-mentoring partner of all scientific institutions in their effors of digitalizing in their scientific areas. We provide expertise and develop solutions for managing scientific data, research software engineering as well as artificial intelligence. We also develop and maintain software packages for enabling easier access to compute resources for all sciences. In all things we do, we utilize the software engineering methods we advocate and always work together with a partner/customer outside of our department.

Working groups of the department

The Working Group "Data Management and HPC"

We develop a technical implementation of an integrated digital research data
­manage­ment for all researcher at HZDR.
This implies as first steps the linkage of existing data sources,
documentation of experiments, ­manage­ment and integration of data analysis
of primary data as well as establishing a complete data provenance.

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HIFIS - Helmholtz Federated IT Services

HIFIS aims to ensure an excellent ­information environment for outstanding research in all Helmholtz research fields and a seamless and performant IT-infrastructure connecting knowledge from all centres. To achieve this, HIFIS consists of three Competence Clusters which are distributed throughout different Helmholtz research centers, a Cloud Services Clus­ter (a federated platform for proven first class cloud services), a Backbone Services Clus­ter (high-performance trusted network infrastructure with unified basic services) and a Software Services Clus­ter (platform, training and support for high-quality, sustainable software development).

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Helmholtz AI Consultant Team

We develop and disseminate AI-supported data science solutions to tackle the grand challenges in research and society.

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What is computational science?

Computational Science is a multi-topic discipline that combines elements from computer science, natural sciences, and applied mathematics. Its goal is always to support a specific application area with IT. Furthermore, computational science can be seen as an overarching umbrella to the three pillars of science (model, simulation, and experiment) and nowadays also data science, which is required for leading edge science.

Services of the Group

The Computational Science Group (FWCC) serves as the first contact for all questions regarding the scientific usage of IT. This can be (but is not limited to):

• Technical realization for managing research data including data ingest, annotating data using a laboratory documentation system, web-based data evaluation workflows, data publication and archiving
• Professional usage of modern software-engineering methods for developing software in a research environment as well as providing the necessary tools
• Consulting and support in using modern AI methods as well as data preparation for a data analysis with machine learning/deep learning methods
• Software co-design for high performant, platform independent components
• Performance analysis and support with the optimization of existing applications
• Teaching/mentoring regarding all facets of our work, including providing trainings in the Software Carpentry format

The forms of the cooperation can be manyfold:

• True joint development (FWCC team members work together with colleagues from other institutes on a project)
• Mentoring (FWCC team members advise colleagues that work on a project)
• Delegation (members of other institutes joing FWCC for a limited time to learn basics computational science skills needed for their work). This delegation is especially possible for Ph.D. students who can spend up to six months in our department on an own budget provided by the center directors.

Beyond this the deparment is also embedded in a number of Research and Development collaborations on a national and international level.