Research Software Engineering and Data Management

Software Lab is a inter-group structure within ML4Q addresses challenges in Research Data Management (RDM), and Research Software Engineering (RSE). It supports the cluster’s members by promoting best software practices, developing sustainable software solutions, and enabling reproducible, high-quality research data management workflows. Software Lab acts as a hub for expertise, collaboration, and innovation at the interface of data, software, and quantum research. Research Data Management (RDM) Research Data Management involves organizing, storing, and preserving data generated in research projects, encompassing raw experiment data, simulations, processed results, source code, and publications. The ideal standard is adherence to the FAIR principles, ensuring data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Despite challenges, ML4Q acknowledges the importance of RDM and is actively addressing it. By embracing FAIR standards, ML4Q aims to overcome the issues of lost or inaccessible data in the physics field, recognizing the need for collaboration and a step-by-step transition. ML4Q is committed to managing research data effectively and elevating it to FAIR standards in the cluster’s work. Research Software Engineering pursues the overarching goal of making science more effective and efficient by supporting scientists with promotion of agile, sustainable, and high-quality research software. Emphasis is placed on clean, well-structured code that follows established best practices and is designed for long-term maintainability. Software is developed in a way that allows future developers to easily understand, extend, and adapt existing solutions. Comprehensive, documentation and user-friendly interfaces ensure that easy use of the software by new users. By fostering sustainable software development, ML4Q supports reproducible research and maximizes the longterm impact of its scientific results.

The Software Lab supports ML4Q researchers in developing, maintaining, and using research software in a sustainable and efficient way. Its primary audience are scientists who heavily rely on software for data acquisition, analysis, storage and long-term reuse. Software Lab acts as a coordination and exchange hub for software development within ML4Q. Yearly we open a [call for the research software projects](reserve-webpage/will-be-added-later), where every member can submit a proposals for a missing software solution beneficial for multiple ML4Q member. Software Lab takes an active part in shaping requirements, planning architecture, and implementation of the project selected by Software Lab steering committee. The software scope covers the experimental data acquisition and visualization, metadata and its processing, experimental hardware challenges. One concrete success story is the Metadata Database (MDDB), which was developed to reduce the overhead of manual metadata handling and to enable automated, consistent metadata collection during experiments. Integrated with the data acquisition frameworks developed inside ML4Q—QCoDeS’ expansion QuMADA, and Elicit, the successor of Qupulse—MDDB collects and stores metadata in a centralized database. This allows researchers to interlink measurements, search across experiments, and systematically classify their results, significantly improving data reuse, reproducibility, and long-term accessibility without adding complexity to everyday lab work. In addition, ML4Q is exploring the integration of Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN) and Scientific Data Management Systems (SDMS) to further improve the organization, accessibility, and consistency of research data and metadata. The Software Lab also addresses the social aspects of software development by fostering personal connections between software developers across different ML4Q members. This is achieved through peer-to-peer communication and dedicated networking activities, including organized events such as the [Software Day](linkto-announcement). To receive the regular announcements from the Software Lab please sign-up for the mailing list by sending an email to ml4q-softwarelab-join@lists.rwth-aachen.de