Hello! My name is Ian Cosden and I am the Director of the Research Software Engineering Group at Princeton University. More on that later, first let me tell you a little about me.
My background is in Mechanical Engineering. I have always loved math, physics, and knowing how trendy new technology works. After working as an Engineer for a couple of years, I went back to graduate school to pursue a PhD. Something about research, and being on the frontier of discovery, pulled me back. In grad school, I developed computer simulations of microscopic bubbles in an effort to understand the very beginning stages of boiling and how certain elements could influence things (the official title of my PhD research project was “A Hybrid Atomistic-Continuum Model for Liquid Vapor-Phase Change”). It made for some great images and videos, but the research wasn’t quite right for me. Instead, I realized that I loved writing code to solve scientific problems. And that started my journey toward a career in Research Software Engineering - writing code that solves cutting-edge research questions.
For many years, we didn’t have a great name for people who specialized in writing code for research.
