5 Globally Renowned Companies Supporting Scientific Software Research and Development
Scientific research and development is one of the most prominent fields in science and technology.
Over the past decades, thousands of scientific studies led to the development of various products including pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, laboratory tools, test instruments, software tools and scholastic publications such as books, science journals and academic papers. Many scientists also did remarkable efforts in discovering new ways and means on how to improve the quality of human life. These product development and scientific explorations opened up new theories, principles and practices helpful in guiding the new generation of scientists, engineers, researchers, educators and technical people working on companies, industries, governments, research institutes and universities.
While this subject covers various categories of science, the key objective in developing scientific software is to assist scientists and engineers in the process of coding, debugging and maintaining software.
History
The science of scientific software development is not a new concept. In fact, the software engineering crisis during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s affected the development of embedded systems used in radiotherapy machines.
The rise of the internet during the 90’s introduced dramatic changes and evolutions in computer algebra systems, numerical and statistical libraries, visual data analysis tools, computational chemistry and other scientific areas. New opportunities emerged in the software engineering industry as well as in the scientific research and development world.
Sophisticated computing tools which are mostly used in the manufacturing, automotive, engineering, aerospace and heavy industry sectors advanced to educational and research fields. New breeds of companies began to evolve while old companies were forced to upgrade their systems by leveraging the power of internet technology.
In light of these technological advancements, these are the five companies that decided to focus their attention in the area of scientific software research and development.
Scientific Software Group
Scientific Software Group (SSG) is an international leader in providing state-of-the-art software for environmental and water-resources engineers. SSG has been an environmental software source since 1984. Today, it has over 150 software titles of ground water software, geotechnical software, air dispersion modeling software, surface water modeling software, slope analysis software, and environmental database software.
Some of its popular products are MODRET, Surfer 12 and Groundwater Vistas.
Scientific Software Services
Founded in 1988, Scientific Software Services is the largest third-party supplier of Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) software and hardware in the world today. Their first product, EPRWare, was originally designed for data acquisition on a Varian EPR spectrometer.
The company today is developing more products for further enhancing the EPR-spectroscopists’ skills and ability to gather, analyze, and organize spectral data on various computer platforms and on providing web-based data acquisition and spectrometer control.
FRACTAL Team
Founded in 2005, FRACTAL is a private company in Spain focusing on the development and operation of complex control software systems for data reduction and analysis of scientific projects. As a company specializing in engineering services and software development, FRACTAL have proven experience in the development of scientific software for Astronomy, High Energy Physics, Biotechnology, Material Analysis, and Teledetection.
One of its core products is the Wasatch Photonics.
Scientific Software Solutions
Scientific Software Solutions is a European consultant company that was established in Bulgaria in 2000. It offers highly professional services to its customers in finding and obtaining their needed scientific software. It also provides a wide range of high quality scientific and technical software applications to companies, industries, research institutes, governments and universities.
Some of its current products are the Gaussian 09, HSC Chemistry 7 and Mnova 8 Suite.
GraphPad Software
Established in 1984, GraphPad Software is a US-based company dedicated to creating software tools that simplify data analysis, statistics and graphing exclusively for the international scientific community. These software products are the GraphPad Prism, InStat, StatMate and QuickCalcs.
In the company’s website is a Data Analysis Resource Center page providing guides, books and articles on statistics and curve fitting. They also offer on-site training courses as part of their product support services.
