Director Charlotte P. Lee recently received an award from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI) division. The award funds the three year research project Scientists and their Software: A Sociotechnical Investigation of Scientific Software Development and Sharing. This research project will examine how scientists develop and share Scientific Cyberinfrastructure Software (SCIS) as part of their day-to-day research practice through a qualitative, ethnographic study of six research groups at the University of Washington.

Understanding SCIS development and sharing is necessary to ensure continued integrity of datasets shared within and among communities, facilitate the sharing of the tools and practices that are developed using national research funds, and most importantly continue to support a fundamental tenet of scientific research: the open communication of the processes and practices behind published research findings. This study complements the existing efforts of CSC lab examining cyberinfrastructure endeavors while enabling a deeper focus on the software practices of leading scientists and their groups in the context of their overall research practice. Further detail about the project may be found on our Project page.

The grant proposal was co-authored by PhD Candidate, Drew Paine, who will be working on the project for the duration of his thesis work, with the option of continuing on this project as a postdoc.