Stage 4-6 mois au CEA Saclay: Création d'un outil intégré de contrôle d'expériences de laboratoire

[denisvion]

Bonjour à tous.

Notre groupe de recherche au CEA Saclay propose un stage ambitieux, dans un cadre high-tech, à un jeune excellent et inventif, capable de travailler en français ou en anglais.
Ce stage dit "de fin d'études" (4-6 mois) est rémunéré suivant l'école du stagiaire (700 à 1000€ mensuel pour un élève ingénieur de dernière année par exemple).
Le descriptif du stage en anglais, se trouve ci-dessous. Il y a de quoi s'amuser si on aime la programmation objet, Python, et les défis un peu fous.

TITLE: "Implementation of an Object-Oriented Integrated Lab Control Environment in Python".

CONTACT: denis.vion@cea.fr

Our Quantronics group performs research in fundamental electronics at cryogenic temperatures and at microwave frequencies (quantum computing with superconducting qubits). The current experiments performed in the lab require a highly complex, distributed signal generation and data acquisition architecture involving commercial and custom-built measurement equipment. Each experiment generates very large quantities of numerical data which need to be stored, documented and analyzed in situ. Since the currently available commercial data acquisition solutions (e.g. Labview) cannot provide the necessary flexibility and adaptability needed in this kind of experiment, we aim to implement a custom-built object-oriented, integrated lab control environment. The goal of the internship is therefore to design and implement such a system for use in our multi-qubit experiments. The software should provide the following functionalities:

It should allow the user to access and control a wide range of distributed measurement equipment (through GPIB, Ethernet, …) and to easily acquire and analyze data from different sources. It should furthermore allow the systematic management, documentation and storage of the measurement data. In addition, it should comprise a graphical user interface with extensive visualization and control mechanisms in order to ease the data acquisition and analysis process. Finally, it should be flexible and simple enough to be easily adaptable and usable in a wide range of contexts.
A prototype which has recently been developed in the lab and which is already in use can serve as a starting point and/or be redesigned during the internship.

The following tasks should be performed during the internship:

1. Requirements analysis based on the needs of the experimenters and the measurement infrastructure present in the lab.
2. Design of the software system based on the requirements found earlier.
3. Implementation and test of the software in Python (and possibly additional languages).
4. Documentation and public release under an open source license (e.g. GPL or MIT)

The candidate should be familiar with software design, object-oriented programming, Python, C/C++ and git. Basic knowledge of GUI programming and the QT GUI library is an advantage. The project demands a high degree of independence and understanding as well as good communication and writing skills. The result of this high-profile work will in the best case yield a public release of the software under the authorship of the candidate.

(The applicant will be tested on a simple programming exercice)