Call for applications autumn 2023

Please note that the deadline for the autumn call 2023 has passed. However, we encourage you to submit your request for support for the Open Call for applications. The open call has no deadline. Here, you can fill in the request form and describe the project, the problems you are facing and which type of support you need. We will schedule a meeting with you for an intake in which you can discuss your request in more detail. 

Find out more about the Open Call

Do you use different software tools and compute platforms in your research to run your (e.g., machine learning or simulation) models, to store- and analyse your data? Does it take you effort and time to connect the different steps in your work process?

To help you with these kinds of questions, we open this autumn call to let you experience how research engineering can improve your work and help you make more impact with your research. The research engineers of RDM Support can help you with automating, improving, and optimizing your projects’ workflow when it comes to data processing, data analysis and computational (modelling) pipelines. We offer combined expertise in software engineering, academic research and IT infrastructure for research data and compute.

Examples of projects we can help you with are:

  • Automating computational steps (e.g., running a collection of scripts in a pipeline).
  • Implementing a workflow framework such as Galaxy, Snakemake, NextFlow.
  • Improving the scalability of your software for high performance computing and cloud solutions at the SURF national computing infrastructures (Snellius, Research Cloud).
  • Automating data transfers and processing steps, for example using storage facilities at Utrecht University (UU) like Yoda.
  • Minimizing the number of data copies in the system.
  • Implementing data version control (to keep track of different versions of the (output) data).

In this RDM Story we show what research engineering can do for a project to improve the research.

The goal of these improvements is to increase the quality, reproducibility and reusability of the research done at the UU. Aspects that will help you to contribute to open science (FAIR).

Project Proposal

Fill in the one-page proposal form that you can find at the bottom of this page and describe the project, the problems you are facing or the opportunities for improvement and how the Research Engineering team can contribute to your project.

A good proposal addresses most of the points below:

  • Show the impact for the wider research community, particularly interdisciplinary research;
  • Show that code and data will be as open as possible (given privacy constraints);
  • Show why the expertise of the research engineering team is necessary for your project;
  • Explain how the result of the project will be maintained in the future.

Who can apply?

This call is open for all researchers at Utrecht University from all faculties and disciplines. The main applicant should have:

  • at least a Master’s degree;
  • a permanent contract at UU;
  • at least 2 hours per week of involvement as a project lead;
  • at least 2 hours per week of technical commitment, but this can also be filled in by someone else.

Support you get

Selected projects will receive 0.5 FTE for one year of research engineering support to improve your data or computational pipeline. We will provide you with:

  • expertise on compute and data services;
  • best practices and principles for programming code;
  • experts on research software;
  • 2 or 3 research engineers will be involved in the project;
  • 10,000 hours’ worth of SURF credits (if needed);
  • 1 TB of storage on Yoda.

Even if your proposal is ultimately declined, you still will receive at least one consultation meeting with research engineers about your project.

Deadline for proposal

Submit the one-page proposal before 1 February 2024. Fill out the application form.

Application form

Contact and information

For more information and questions, you can reach us at research.engineering@uu.nl.

Help from the Research Engineering team with other kinds of research projects

If you need help with software support that is not in scope of this call, check the Open call and feel free to get in touch with the research engineering team. They are there to help you.

We plan to have more frequent calls with different topics. If you want to stay informed about our next calls, please register for the RDM Support newsletter where you will be updated.