An ITEE honours student has learnt the importance of maintaining software tools during his work with RCC this year.
Zane Van Iperen is working on an optimisation-workflow project for his thesis, with RCC Director David Abramson as his supervisor.
Zane’s goal is to integrate and demonstrate the use of multi-objective optimisation in scientific workflows.
He says he’s learnt a lot during his time with RCC thus far: “I’ve seen the usefulness behind workflows for designing and executing tasks; I’ve learned about distributed-computing tools, such as Nimrod, and how to use them; and I’ve learned that code written in the late-90s/early-2000s tends not to follow such rigorous standards and practices as today’s code.
“I’ve always believed that unless you maintain your tools, they’ll wither and die. Nimrod/O, one of the tools I’ve been working with, has reinforced this belief, as it’s nearing the 'wither and die' stage. One of the parts of my thesis is to bring Nimrod/O up to today’s standards (as much as possible) and integrate it with a scientific workflow management system.”
For UQ research use, RCC maintains a suite of scientific workflow tools, including Nimrod, Kepler and Galaxy. To learn more, visit RCC’s Workflow webpage. For workflow issues, please contact RCC Support: rcc-support@uq.edu.au.
