CORSA is the Center for Open-Source Research Software Stewardship and Advancement, a member of the Consortium for the Advancement of Scientific Software (CASS). Our goal is to promote sustainable practices in the research software community and support the development, maintenance, and long-term viability of research software.

NEWSLETTER - FEBRUARY 2025

Welcome to the CORSA newsletter! Each month, we’ll provide information about what CORSA has been up to, list our upcoming events, and highlight funding opportunities.

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If you would like to become more involved in CORSA activities, please contact us at: :email: info@corsa.center

In This Issue:

1. CORSA Updates

Recent activities undertaken by CORSA, include:

2. Recent News

➤ Open Source Software Foundations HPSF and NumFOCUS Featured In US-RSE Association February Community Call

The Research Software Engineering Association (US-RSE) February Community Call features presentations from two Open Source Software Foundations on Friday, February 14, at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT. Leah Silen for NumFOCUS and Christian Trott for HPSF will discuss how these foundations offer a neutral home for software projects. Project members part of such foundations (including Matt Thompson from Open Force Field and Andrew Fullard from TARDIS) will share thier experiences, followed by an open Q&A about foundations with attendees. US-RSE (free) membership required.

➤ HPSF Conference Call For Proposals

Submit your proposal by February 23, 2025 to speak at the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) inaugural conference slated for May 5-8, 2025 in Chicago, IL. Conference sessions will provide an update on HPSF activities, introduce new members and projects, foster collaboration in the working groups, and hear from members about their goals for the future of the foundation.

➤ Insights and Impact From Five Cycles of Essential Open Source Software for Science

For the past five years, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has supported the maintenance, growth, development, and community engagement for critical open source tools that are used globally in the life sciences through its Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program. To our knowledge at the time of writing, this program (193 grants with $51.8 million in funding) represents the largest initiative to meet these needs. Stories and data from this unique grantee community represent one of the best available accounts on the impact of the open source foundations of science, and the urgent need to continue and expand support for them. In this report, we set out to review the impact of the first five cycles of the EOSS program to date from multiple perspectives and a variety of data sources, highlighting the support required to sustain OSS as well as the successes of our community.

➤ Charting a path towards a sustainable and resilient research software infrastructure ecosystem

Over the past five months, the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) team has been working on a study aimed at understanding the landscape of community infrastructure for research software and identifying the gaps, challenges, and opportunities for advancing its sustainability and resilience. After months of intensive research, the IOI team hosted a virtual open presentation on January 23, 2025. The aim of the presentation was to share the preliminary findings of the research study and also provide a platform to receive questions, feedback, and recommendations from the community.

➤ NumFOCUS January 2025 Project Updates

See the latest updates from NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored projects, such as mlpack, scikit-learn, Julia and others!

➤ FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Principles 2-year review

Do you think the FAIR principles for Research Software (https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00068) are working?

2+ years after publishing, with over 500 people involved, we’re keen to understand if the FAIR principles have been useful and usable. If not, we’re asking the community what needs changing to make them work.

3. Upcoming Events

➤ deRSE25 - 5th conference for Research Software Engineering in Germany - Feb 25-27, 2025, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

➤ OpenSSF Policy Summit DC - March 4, 2025, Washington DC

➤ 2025 Improving Scientific Software Conference - April 7-10, 2025 at NSF NCAR’s Center Green Campus, Boulder, CO, and virtually

➤ HPSF Conference - May 5-8, 2025, Chicago, IL

➤ Sustainable Scientific Software Conference (S3C) - May 5-8, 2025, Denver, CO

➤ Open Source Summit North America - June 23-25, 2025, Denver, Colorado

➤ IEEE eScience 2025 Conference - Sept 15-18, 2025, Chicago, IL

➤ US-RSE’25 - October 6-8 2025, Philadelphia, PA

4. New Funding Opportunities

➤ EXPRESS:2025 Exploratory Research for Extreme-Scale Science

Funding Amount: $136M over 5 years
Deadline: February 25, 2025 (pre-proposal),May 6, 2025 (full)
Summary:

The DOE SC program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) hereby announces its interest in basic research to explore potentially high-impact approaches in scientific computing and extreme-scale science.

Supporting “…significant innovation […] in the development of effective paradigms and approaches for realizing the full potential of scientific computing from emerging technologies. The proposed research should not focus on a specific science use case, but rather on creating the body of knowledge and understanding that will inform future advances in extreme-scale science. Consequently, the funding […] is not intended to incrementally extend current research in the area of the proposed project.”

Reasearch topics include:

➤ Early Career Research Program

Funding Amount: up to $16M over 2 years
Deadline: February 18, 2025 (pre-applications), April 22, 2025 (close date)
Summary:

The DOE SC hereby invites applications for support under the Early Career Research Program in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP); Nuclear Physics (NP); Isotope Research and Development (R&D) and Production (DOE IP); and Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP). The purpose of this program is to support the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and to stimulate research careers in the areas supported by SC

➤ Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC): Partnerships in Basic Energy Sciences

Funding Amount: $40M over 4 years
Deadline: February 21, 2025 (pre-applications), April 25, 2025 (full)
Summary

The DOE SC programs in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) announce their interest in receiving applications from interdisciplinary teams to establish partnerships under the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program in specific targeted topic areas that relate to the BES and ASCR missions.

All applications must address fundamental research in support of the BES and ASCR missions. Partnerships between domain scientists in the fields of materials science, condensed matter physics, chemical sciences, geosciences, energy-related biosciences, applied mathematics, and computer science will be critical to accelerate the scientific discovery process through revolutionary advances in models, mathematics, algorithms, data, and computing. The integrated teams will engage with the SciDAC Institutes and make full use of DOE’s classical high- performance computing capabilities. In addition, applications must focus on one of three topics: Complex dynamical systems for energy-relevant chemical and/or physical systems and materials; Reliable and explainable Artificial Intelligence for chemical and/or physical mechanism extraction from phenomena; and Foundation Models for chemical and materials sciences.

➤ NSF 25-511: Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT)

Funding Amount: up to $1M over 3 years
Deadline: February 24, 2025 (full)
Summary:

Through this initiative, the Directorate for STEM Education (EDU) and the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), in partnership with Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron) through the Micron Foundation, seek to support experiential learning opportunities for individuals from all professional and educational backgrounds, resulting in increased access to, and interest in, career pathways in emerging technology fields (e.g., advanced manufacturing, advanced wireless, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum information science, semiconductors, and microelectronics). Large-scale challenges like advances in microelectronics or artificial intelligence also require a STEM workforce that brings varied perspectives and expertise to further accelerate the translation of science and engineering discoveries into large-scale solutions. Moreover, as current and new emerging technologies continue to evolve, unforeseen issues around security, safety and privacy will impact the preparation of the workforce. Emerging technologies are also dynamic and rapidly changing, with career entry and advancement often requiring “learning-by-doing” experience, even for those with some STEM education. Therefore, NSF recognizes that a competitive emerging technology workforce must include individuals from traditional and nontraditional education pathways as well as those individuals who may have “stopped” out of traditional educational pathways.

➤ NSF - Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE): Core Programs

Funding Amount: Up to $600k over 3 years
Deadline: CCF, CNS, IIS Small Projects: Anytime; OAC Core Projects: October 23, 2025
Summary:

The NSF CISE Directorate supports research and education projects that develop new knowledge in all aspects of computing, communications, and information science and engineering, as well as advanced cyberinfrastructure, through the following core programs:

Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF):

Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS):

Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS):

Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC):

Proposers are invited to submit proposals in several project classes, which are defined as follows:

5. Get Involved: Working Groups

➤ Foundations Working Group (Foundations Forum)

➤ Metrics Working Group

➤ Other CASS Working Groups

6. Tips & Tricks

Free Communications Training

Communication is essential for building and maintining a strong community for open source software projects. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) provides a range of free training courses to help improve communciation skills. A selection of these are listed below.

For the full list of courses offered by CZI, as will as recordings of past courses, please visit their Capacity Building Opportunities page.

Free Artificial Intelligence Training

The LF AI & Data Foundation is offering a series of free training courses for developers of AI software. These include:

7. Additional Resources

Grant-making Organizations for Scientific Software

Contact CORSA

If you have any questions or need assistance with grant applications, joining an open source software foundation, any other questions about sustaining your project, or are interested in contributing to CORSA, feel free to reach out to: :email: info@corsa.center

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