Education and training arm of the Sloan-funded UC OSPO Network, building open source literacy and research software sustainability across UC campuses.
Role: Co-Principal Investigator (UCLA Lead), Education Working Group Lead Grant: Sloan Foundation, $1.85M multi-campus award Focus: Research software sustainability, open source governance, training pathways
Overview
Modern research depends on open source software.
From Jupyter notebooks to small Unix utilities embedded deep in dependency chains, research infrastructure is built on code that often has no institutional home.
The UC OSPO Network was created to change that. My role focuses on education and training: building pathways that help researchers, librarians, and Research Software Engineers understand sustainability, governance, licensing, and community practice.
What we built
UC OSPO Network (multi-campus)
The Sloan Foundation funded a six-campus UC collaboration to establish Open Source Program Offices across the system. This is not a branding exercise. It’s an attempt to formalize:
- Licensing support
- Governance structures
- Industry partnerships
- Education pipelines
Education Working Group
I lead the Education Working Group across the network. We developed:
- A public inventory of open source training resources
- Modular lessons designed for researchers and librarians
- Workshops including the Better Research Software series
The aim is practical: teach researchers how to structure code into maintainable modules, document projects for discoverability, apply licenses correctly, and publish software with DOIs and citation metadata.
UC Open Summit
I co-organized the UC Open Summit, bringing together campuses and industry participants to discuss open source strategy and implementation.
How it works
OSPO education is not separate from the Data Science Center.
Researchers come to us with large Jupyter notebooks that need refactoring, software that lacks documentation, code that can’t be reproduced, projects that can’t be cited. OSPO education formalizes what we’ve been teaching informally for years. It moves from ad hoc advice to structured curriculum.
Outcomes
- Six-campus OSPO network operational
- Education Working Group producing modular, reusable training resources
- UC Open Summit convened cross-campus and industry participants
- Curriculum integrating with Carpentries delivery infrastructure
Collaborators
- UC Santa Cruz OSPO (network lead)
- UC San Diego, Berkeley, Davis, and Irvine OSPO partners
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation