Skip to McMaster Navigation Skip to Site Navigation Skip to main content
McMaster logo

Research & Innovation

RSD: We Are Looking For You

If you are a faculty, staff, or student involved in research software development, or in need of a solution or support, we are looking for you.

What do we do?

DRCP: We are part of the Digital Research Commons Pilot (DRCP), a three-year initiative to build a more connected, capable, and researcher-focused approach to digital research support.

RSD: As part of its recent inclusion in the DRCP, the Research Software Development (RSD) team is transitioning to a revised and expanded mandate. We are here to directly develop software projects, as well as develop resources and actively support software development that is happening across Research.

Why are we looking for you?

We are presently engaging with groups across campus to identify needs and gaps related to research software development. We are looking to identify resources, training, and solutions that we can develop to help everyone in Research develop better, quicker, higher quality, more durable software solutions to assist research.

What are we doing now?

MacLIMS: We extended and currently maintain the McMaster Lab Information Management System pilot project. MacLIMS is designed to reduce the administrative burden in managing core research platforms and to facilitate and increase the use of these platforms for everyone across McMaster. This and other past projects are listed on our History page.

Automated Speech Recognition: We are currently exploring an Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) service. We have identified a potential need for a secure, on-premise transcription service for video and audio recordings, such as for human participant research interviews. This project may have particular value for highly sensitive content that cannot be outsourced to be transcribed by external, third-party services. This project is a collaboration between RSD, RDM, UTS ISS, and MREB teams.

Sample Projects: It can be difficult and time consuming for developers to interpret documentation quickly and correctly to implement common functionality in their own custom systems. To this end we are developing some sample projects in different languages (e.g. JavaScript, PHP) to demonstrate exactly what to code where. These sample projects include secure authentication (single sign-on (SSO), OAuth2 and LDAP), AODO standards, McMaster branding.

Workshops: We are developing workshops to help use software development tools, including project management (PM), system setup (e.g. containers via Docker) and version control systems (VCS), to name a few.

What might we do?

We are looking to develop resources that are valuable for software developers to help facilitate common tasks. If we can do that by pointing to existing McMaster or external resources, we will. If these resources need supplementing, such as with practical examples, we’ll create that documentation. If we need to develop new resources, we’ll do that too.

Some areas that we’re exploring:

  • Guidance on version control systems (e.g. Git, GitHub, GitLab)
  • Guidance on ticketing systems (e.g. Git*, Jira -ServiceDesk -SourceCode -Cloud)
  • Guidance on system/service stacks (e.g. LAMP: Linux OS, Apache web server, MariaDB database, PHP programming language)
  • Guidance on database systems (e.g. MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite)
  • Guidance on development stacks (e.g. MEAN, MERN, MEVN JavaScript stacks) and frameworks (e.g. Next.js, Material UI)
  • Guidance on software system design (e.g. data modelling, software architectural patterns: MVC, MVVM)

Why do we want to talk to you?

We want to engage with every group we can find in across campus in Research to identify needs and gaps related to research software development. We want to target our efforts to develop resources, training, and solutions that help you.

If you are a faculty, staff, or student involved in research software development, or in need of a solution or support, reach out to us through the Contact the RSD button above.