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Announcing the US Research Software Sustainability Institute to the CS&S FSP program

Advocating for research software in the US

The US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI) was founded in 2017 with a conceptualization grant from the National Science Foundation’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (S2I2) program. Their goal was to gather evidence for the importance of research software, identify unique sustainability challenges that were not already being addressed, and formulate a plan (https://plan.urssi.us/) for an institute to implement solutions.

In the years since their inception, URSSI has established itself with various private and federal grants. During this time, URSSI has raised considerable awareness of research software sustainability issues through their nationwide workshops and pilot training activities. Their mission is to improve the recognition, development, and use of software for a more sustainable research enterprise. They achieve this through collaboratively developing education, outreach, and software services that emphasize open, transparent, reproducible, and cooperative practices. In addition to being an institute for software expertise, URSSI provides a social infrastructure that promotes an inclusive and diverse community of research software engineers, maintainers, contributors, and users.

CS&S is looking forward to supporting URSSI in their goals to make scientific research more sustainable in an increasingly digital field. Their work aligns with CS&S’ goal to use scientific research and technology development to improve the lives of all people. By providing services aimed towards making research software sustainable and accessible, URSSI will further the sharing of knowledge within research communities and accelerate the progress of science.

The team

URSSI’s team includes a consortium of co-PIs, senior personnel, and advisory and steering committee members. Together they hold decades of experience and credibility in the research software space. URSSI’s project lead, and advisory committee chair Karthik Ram is the co-founder and director of the rOpenSci Project, and a senior researcher at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. You can learn more about URSSI and their team of contributors here.

Upcoming work and announcements

With new funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, URSSI will work with CS&S to further develop their infrastructure and cultivate their community at large.

We're hiring! This funding provides support to hire a Community Manager (CM), who will grow a thriving community of practitioners interested in the use and sustainability of research software. In this brand new role, the CM will be responsible for designing and delivering a series of online activities including a highly curated newsletter, monthly webinars, and a new website that will include guest content to raise awareness of relevant activities around research software training and policy research. For more information on this role and how to apply, click here!