Tobias Richter

Tobias has earned a PhD in atomic physics with the use of synchrotron radiation. He has a keen interest in software and data since owning a C-64. Before joining ESS, Tobias worked at the Diamond Light Source in the UK, doing data acquisition and handling data for industry users amount other things. At the ESS Data Management and Software Center, he is the group leader for Data Management.

- I started working at ESS in 2014, just before the proposal for BrightnESS was submitted. Since the work fell into my scope, we decided that I would be the leader of Work Package 5: Real-Time Management of ESS Data. In my daily work, I have regular Skype meetings with our projects partners and I spend some time e-mailing and reporting. We also work a lot with issue tracking tools, such as the ESS Wiki and Jira systems in order to create a common understanding of our tasks, and people use them more and more as well. I also spend time on spreading the word about the importance of knowledge sharing.

We are currently setting up an integration demonstrator for our work package, where we run all software into one big apparatus for data streaming and processing. We are planning to finish this at the end of the month. As input, we use data from other facilities as well as prototype data from WP4 and simulated data.    

What I like most about BrightnESS is the benefits and support it brings for ESS. Currently, all the other members in my group are financed by BrightnESS and when the project is finished, we will have very trained people ready for the operations in the ESS facility. Also important is the work with our partners, both in BrightnESS and our In-Kind partners. Here, we are building up a software platform that will be used in the other facilities as well - and by involving the partners, we are getting more knowhow than we would have just on location at the ESS.

To me, the main challenges for WP5 are about getting the performance right as everything needs to work as fast as real time. More importantly, we need to get everything correct in order to get the right results. You can usually tell if the performance is too poor, but you cannot always tell if the results are wrong.

BrightnESS will have an impact throughout the major spallation sources in Europe on how we treat data. This will lead to a more harmonised way of dealing with data as well as common processing tools, which will make it easier for users to migrate between facilities and bring everyone closer together.