Better Scientific Software Fellowship Program

Krell Institute, Ames IA

Investigators

Abstract

Addressing the scientific software challenges facing the nation requires broad collaboration to foster practices, processes, and tools to improve software developer productivity and software sustainability. Both of those are key aspects of ensuring the integrity of computational results and increasing scientific productivity. The Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellowship Program, launched in 2018 with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), provides recognition and funding for leaders and advocates of high-quality scientific software. This project enables NSF to collaborate in sponsorship of the BSSw Fellowship Program and participate in managing the program. The project was piloted for one year with NSF support of one BSSw Fellow and one Honorable Mention. This award expands NSF's participation in the program to support three BSSw Fellows and three Honorable Mentions each year for two years, the same level of support provided by DOE. Each BSSw fellow will receive a stipend that can be used for various activities that promote improved scientific software, such as organizing a workshop or creating a tutorial. All BSSw fellows and honorable mentions receive travel support to work with scientific community members and form a cohort. NSF and DOE are leaders in advanced computing, pushing the growth of computational and data-enabled science and engineering as an essential driver of scientific and technological progress. Moreover, NSF and DOE researchers have developed a wide range of high-impact scientific software for advanced modeling, simulation, discovery, and analysis. The country faces a software crisis, however, due to disruptive changes in computer architectures and increasing complexity in next-generation computational science. NSF partnership in sponsoring the BSSw Fellowship Program will enable a more robust approach toward pioneering the future of advanced computing ecosystems in support of American leadership in science and engineering. The BSSw Fellowship Program enhances workforce development and pathways to the NSF and DOE software communities, though nurturing a network of people who advance software practices as a fundamental aspect of increasing overall scientific productivity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.