Scientific Software Challenges and Community Responses - Daniel Katz

Abstract:

As the process of science has become increasingly digital, scientific outputs and products have grown beyond simple papers and books to include software, data, and other electronic components. Scientific knowledge is embedded in these components. And papers and books themselves are also becoming increasingly digital, allowing them to executable and reproducible. As we move towards this future where science is performed in and recorded as a variety of linked digital products, the characteristics and properties that developed for books and papers need to be applied to all digital products. This talk will discuss a number of the related challenges that face the computational and data scientific software community, including how researchers find software, how developers get credit for writing software, and how software can be sustained, many of which have parallels with data. It will also discuss how different members of the community are individually and collectively trying to address these challenges.

Biography:

Daniel S. Katz is a Program Director in the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. His interest is in the development and use of advanced cyberinfrastructure to solve challenging problems at multiple scales. His technical research interests are in applications, algorithms, fault tolerance, and programming in parallel and distributed computing, including HPC, Grid, Cloud, etc. He is also interested in policy issues, including citation and credit mechanisms and practices associated with software and data, organization and community practices for collaboration, and career paths for computing researchers. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1988, 1990, and 1994, respectively.