Collaborations in the Extreme: The Rise of Open Code Development in the Scientific Community

The internet is changing the scientific landscape by fostering international, interdisciplinary and collaborative software development. More than ever before, software is a crucial component of any scientific result. The ability to easily share code is reshaping expectations about reproducibility—a fundamental tenet of the scientific process. Furthermore, in this new landscape, scientific communities develop open source software, mostly built and maintained by unpaid volunteers, upon which both scientists and industry increasingly depend upon for day-to-day operations.

In this lecture, Kelle Cruz will briefly provide the backstory of how these shifts have come about, describe some of the most impactful open source projects, and discuss efforts currently underway aimed at ensuring these community-led projects are sustainable and receive support. She will conclude with a discussion of the implications of these shifts for science education and academic science.

Cruz is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Hunter College of the City University of New York, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and is currently on sabbatical at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics. Her research interests include the study of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. She received both her bachelor’s and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and held postdoctoral fellowships at the American Museum of Natural History and Caltech before joining the Hunter faculty. She is currently serving on the board of the American Astronomical Society. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the AstroBetter blog and wiki and serves on the coordination committee of the Astropy Project.