Last week, Carlos Garcia Jurado Suarez and Anshul Tambay from the Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC) joined researchers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) for part of a week-long workshop focused on predicting the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. The event was part of the Biodiversity Horizons project, which aims to develop scalable, open-source tools for ecological forecasting. The workshop included researchers from the BSC, University of Cape Town, University College London, University of Connecticut, University of South Florida, and the Barcelona Botanical Institute. 

The workshop provided a unique opportunity for SSEC engineers to collaborate directly with scientists on teaching and co-designing software workflows for high-performance computing environments and package development. SSEC worked to run biodiversity exposure models on MareNostrum, BSC’s flagship supercomputer, testing containerized workflows and benchmarking performance across different configurations. 

The Impact Predictions Team on the terrace at BSC.

Building Software Together 

A key component of the workshop was a mini hackathon designed to onboard new contributors to the project. Participants explored the Docker container setup, learned how to run models locally, and began understanding the architecture to best contribute to the project’s R-based package. 

This hands-on experience helped demystify the deployment process and set researchers on the path tools they need to customize projections, schedule high-volume tasks, and collaborate remotely on software. 

Carlos instructing a group on how to use an R package at the mini hackathon.

Looking Ahead 

This in-person collaboration between SSEC and the Impact Predictions team exemplifies the power of co-design in scientific software development. By working side-by-side with domain scientists, SSEC was able to gain a greater understanding of researcher needs and help build technically robust tools. To learn more about the Biodiversity Horizons project and its goals, visit the project page or explore the Github repository. .