The Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL) at the Hariri Institute for Computing is a professional research software engineering and consulting lab that serves as a collaborative partner for computational and data-driven research efforts across Boston University.
Ongoing projects focus on a wide range of topics and technologies, from using machine learning techniques to analyze large corpora, to solving record linkage problems for public health and economics applications, to building production-quality web services and mobile apps that enable research in areas such as electronic health and synthetic biology, to prototyping and deploying smart-city services and platforms.
SAIL is committed to promoting innovation, best practices, and open source models within the research community. SAIL will learn and help teach new technologies and techniques as determined by the needs of any given project.
Across Boston University, the quality and the potential impact of research activities (as well as the success of both students and researchers) are increasingly dependent on the ability to work with data and computational approaches, the development of quality software applications and services, and familiarity with software development practices.
SAIL has provided consultations, project and budget planning assistance, prototype and software application development, and other forms of support to numerous research efforts funded by the Hariri Research Awards, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and other agencies. SAIL has worked with over 40 clients across 12 schools at Boston University; several examples are described briefly below.
If you would like to explore how SAIL can help you achieve your research objectives or would like to discuss what resources are available, please fill out a request form or contact us directly.
If you are seeking other forms of support (including seed funding) for a research effort that requires computational science expertise or software engineering resources, you may also want to consider the Hariri Research Award program.
SAIL is seeking full-time professional software engineers. See current opportunities to apply for a full-time position.
SAIL offers paid internship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students interested in gaining experience working in a professional software development environment situated in a research university context.
The application process for the Spring 2018 semester will begin in Fall 2017. Please join our mailing list to be notified.