At ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, we have a beamtime allocation system that manages proposals, peer review panels, and allocation. It’s maintained by the ISIS computing division to support the over 1200 visiting users who come to ISIS each year.
The User Programme Software group’s Reviews & Allocations team is led by Josh Dawes, who joined ISIS just over a year ago.
Within the team, one of Josh’s main responsibilities is managing the development of the software used by scientists applying for time at ISIS to run their experiments. In particular, the team has been overhauling the system so that multiple facilities, each with their own user programme, can use the same software.
His previous role was as a computer science academic, where he says, “I felt I had done all that I wanted to. I found that I enjoyed people and project management, so the interesting next step for me was to come and run a team”.
“It’s a very nice work environment, I feel like I’m looked after very well which is really good. The people I get to work with are really nice; we’ve got a lot of very clever but very down-to-earth people. You get to actually look after yourself here, which isn’t always a given,” says Josh.
The software that the Reviews & Allocations team is developing is a collaboration between STFC, the European Spallation Source (ESS), and the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI). AT STFC, it’s primarily used by ISIS and CLF. As the project is shared between several facilities which each have their own distinct features, their challenge is to make the software as general as possible.
Each facility does also have some specific features, and this partnership has been a great opportunity for collaboration. For instance, if the team at ISIS has already developed a similar feature to something required at ELI, then they can share their knowledge and work.
Relative to the collaborating partners, ISIS deals with a higher volume of applications, so “it’s important to ensure that the software works under higher loads,” says Josh. This performance-testing suits him well as his PhD was in performance analysis of software, and he’s now fallen into more of that in this role too. Testing the performance more thoroughly at ISIS benefits all the facilities across the collaboration, and Josh says, “it’s rewarding to have such wide impact.”
There are more facilities interested in using the software, so Josh and his team are working on making a piece of very general user office software for use by a wide range of different facilities. Their hope is that this will not only help research facilities, but that it will also benefit users. “If all facilities use similar software, the application process will be easier and more familiar for everyone,” says Josh.
