Scientific Software Development

The technological challenge of the different scientific and engineering subjects has evolved from the need of improving the detection instruments (to produce better CCDs in Astronomy, better sequencing methods in Biotechnology, better particle detectors in High Energy Physics, etc.) to the current status, in which the most critical issue is the management of the large amount of data produced by the faster, more powerful and more capable instruments.

The current development status of scientific instrumentation reached the past 20 years has been possible thanks to the technological advances in Optics, Electronics and Material Physics. However, this progress has produced a new need: the development of powerful software tools able to process, reduce, analyze, archive and distribute the huge amount of data produced by the instruments.

This evolution has led to the growth of the intrinsic complexity of the scientific facilities, transferring the complexity of the parts to the System Control. This implies the use of the most advanced techniques in Software Engineering.

The FRACTAL team has experience in the Development and Operation of Complex Control Software Systems for Data Reduction and Analysis of scientific projects and also in the Definition and Implementation of Distributed Control Systems.

Scientific Software Development: project examples

Examples of the software which our company can develop for scientific applications:
  1. Reduction and Visualization of data for:
    • Astronomy, both ground-based (optical, infrared and radio telescopes) and from Space
    • High Energy Physics
    • Material Analysis
    • Teledetection (Earth Observation Satellites)
    • Radio-diagnosis (TAC, PET, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance)
    • Biotechnology (Sequencing)
  2. Data reduction software (Pipelines)
  3. Data base and User Interfaces (GUIs)
  4. Implementation of existing data files into the Virtual Observatory (VO)
  5. 5. Applications inside the Virtual Observatory environment
  6. Distributed Control systems
  7. Mechanism Control
  8. Real Time Control