Open Source Program Office

UC Santa Cruz

Today’s universe of open source communities has immense potential to amplify the impact of scientific research. Thanks to a generous grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the OSPO UC Santa Cruz is being established to provide a center of gravity that brings together everything needed to unlock that potential.

The OSPO’s mission is to create partnerships with stakeholders within and outside the UC system to promote open source literacy and best practices, helping students learn from open source communities, letting scientists use open source to accelerate research efforts, and connecting students and scientists with sponsors from industry, government, and foundations.

Through a number of continually refined programs that are designed to amplify impact of the UC research enterprise the OSPO is building a community of practitioners who aim to create and share knowledge, collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run successful and effective open source research efforts.

Read more about the OSPO.

Aug 23, 2022 1 min read News
Register: 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium
Register: 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium

Registration is now open for the 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium: the hybrid event will take place at UC Santa Cruz on September 27-29, 2022 – with the not-to-be-missed Systems Oktoberfest returning on the first day’s evening at the lovely UC Santa Cruz Hay Barn!

About

The 1-Minute Pitch

About

Open source research efforts within the University of California face many challenges, including

  • Educating students to be productive in open source projects
  • Revealing the value of open source to the UC system
  • Broadening engagement with industry, government, and foundations

Led by Carlos Maltzahn and Stephanie Lieggi the OSPO is

  • Developing a “marketplace” of open source software projects across the UC system and associated national labs that brings mentors, students, sponsors, and open source stakeholders together
  • Establishing a postdoctoral “incubator fellowship” which will enable fellows to grow communities around their research prototypes
  • Organizing a yearly undergraduate “Open Source Research Experience”, a UC-wide mentor organization that works with Google Summer of Code and other global outreach efforts and engages with industry, government, and foundation sponsorships
  • Creating partnerships with innovative open source teaching initiatives inside and outside the UC system

Programs

Open Source Research Experience
The Open Source Research Experience (OSRE) program provides support for undergraduate and graduate students contributing to open source research efforts. The goal of the program is to seed contributor communities, build community infrastructures and teaching incubator fellows and other UC researchers to effectively lead and delegate. Our participation in the Google Summer of Code is included as part of this mentorship program.
Aug 24, 2022 6 min read programs
Open Source Research Experience
Open Source Incubator Fellowship
This program supports the work of postdoctoral scholars aiming to create and grow productive open source contributor communities around innovative research prototypes in order to amplify the impact of their research. To be considered for this program, a postdoctoral scholar should have a research prototype with significant open source software or hardware infrastructure and a UC Santa Cruz-based faculty mentor.
Aug 24, 2022 3 min read programs
Open Source Incubator Fellowship
Open Source Education
The OSPO supports the creation of course work at UCSC that aims to increase the pool of students skilled in working in the context of large open source software communities. Students of these cources find excellent mentors in academia and industry and often become successful open source contributors. The OSPO also hosts guest lecturers on topics specific to open source, including a yearly workshop series on open source.
Aug 22, 2022 1 min read programs

Blog

NSF will fund design of a support infrastructure for CROSS incubator project
With the support of a one-year, $300,000 grant from the NSF, PI Carlos Maltzahn and co-PI Stephanie Lieggi will explore sustainable support infrastructures for the Skyhook Data Management project.
Sep 9, 2022 3 min read News
NSF will fund design of a support infrastructure for CROSS incubator project
NSF award will support project to promote reproducibility in computer science
With the support of a three-year, $900,000 grant from the NSF, Carlos Maltzahn will participate in collaborative research to increase the reproducibility of computer science research.
Aug 27, 2022 4 min read News
NSF award will support project to promote reproducibility in computer science
Register: 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium
Registration is now open for the 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium: the hybrid event will take place at UC Santa Cruz on September 27-29, 2022 – with the not-to-be-missed Systems Oktoberfest returning on the first day’s evening at the lovely UC Santa Cruz Hay Barn!
Aug 23, 2022 1 min read News
Register: 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium
2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium
Save the date for the 2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium: the hybrid event will take place at UC Santa Cruz on September 27-29, 2022 – with the not-to-be-missed Systems Oktoberfest returning on the first day’s evening at the lovely UC Santa Cruz Hay Barn!
Jul 27, 2022 2 min read News
2022 UC Santa Cruz Open Source Symposium
OSPO UC Santa Cruz funded
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded Professor Carlos Maltzahn a $695,000 two-year grant aimed at establishing an open source program office (OSPO) that will serve the entire campus community.
May 18, 2022 4 min read News
OSPO UC Santa Cruz funded