Rapid – Interview: Jos Koetsier

Sep 4, 2009 by milly-shaw

Jos Koetsier from Edinburgh University tells us about Rapid, the friendly face of supercomputers for scientists.

What is Rapid?If you’re a scientist and you want to access computational resources, you can use Rapid. It generates software which accesses high performance computers and speaks the language of the end user.What problems/issues is Rapid tackling?It tackles the problem of scientists who don’t have the know-how or the time to understand the technical details of accessing supercomputers. The scientists don’t have to type in any command lines, for example. It reduces the time scientists have to spend accessing the information. Also it means anyone can use it.How would you like other software developers and users to get involved in what you are doing?At the moment we’d really like some use cases – people wanting to use the software who can tell us what they’d like to see.What developer communities have you been involved in and if none, why not?We work with colleagues and go to conferences such as this, but nothing else really.What is the coolest or most exciting thing in educational software development?I don’t really have one that springs to mind, there are so many.