[hyperbovine]

I agree with this; scientific computing per se is best left to scientists and cannot be effectively done without the proper training. But there is a huge need in science for well-designed software. I'm talking about bread-and-butter CSE topics like basic UI design and documentation. This is where OP should concentrate their efforts in my opinion. A lot of research quality code is shockingly buggy and difficult to run. To give an example, if you are a biologist trying to run a shiny new machine learning method on your data, you are SOL in most cases unless the original authors went out of their way to enable that. For this reason a few PIs, really rich ones with big bio labs and f.u. grant money, employ full-time software developers, but this not possible for most people.

[rmbeard]

The trend in science is away from GUI's if that is what you are thinking, improved (although far from perfect) programming skills in the sciences and move towards reproducible research has heralded a move away from GUI's, documentation is another matter although that is becoming increasingly automated as well.