Axel Bocciarelli - Front end web developer

"I quit a permanent job in a software development company for a 3-year contract at the ESRF. I valued the idea of doing something useful, of having a chance to contribute to furthering science. I'm a software engineer specialized in front-end web development. At the ESRF, I work with modern web technologies like React and WebGL to create visualization tools for data analysis. I get to work with the end user, which is quite a rarity in my field. The ESRF has a good philosophy on knowledge sharing and a strong software development culture. I'm encouraged to stay up to date with best practices, and to take the time to do things well and contribute to open-source projects to ensure the perenniality of the products. As a web developer, I benefit a lot from the open-source community, so it drives me to be able to contribute back. Today, it's good to see the project I’m working on mature and get adopted by other facilities, inside and outside the PaNOSC¹ community. I know that by helping to make data easily accessible, findable and open source, I am making my contribution to science."

¹ PaNOSC is an EU-funded project, which aims to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible (FAIR) in European research infrastructures. The ESRF is coordinator of this project (link to site).

Axel grew up in the French town of Nancy. He studied engineering in Troy, then worked for 6 years as a front-end web developer in Australia. He moved back to France in 2018 and joined the ESRF in 2020.