Beyond scalability, I think the biggest things you could bring to the scientists here would be test driven development and logs. You won't become a Matlab exper

Beyond scalability, I think the biggest things you could bring to the scientists here would be test driven development and logs. You won't become a Matlab expert on a deadline and they may not actually be Matlab experts either. Tests and visibility into actual behavior are everything here since they don't even seem to have a spec, just a prototype.