Schmidt Futures has announced the establishment of the Virtual Institute of Scientific Software (VISS), with a network of centers at the University of Cambridge, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Washington. According to Science, the funder has committed $40 million over the first five years.

While science has become increasingly reliant on complex programming and technology, the majority of researchers lack the training or experience in software engineering, tools, and methods to produce effective, reliable, and scalable solutions. VISS will work to streamline scientific research and discovery that can sometimes be delayed, as researchers looking to conduct further experiments struggle to adapt unstable and outdated programming.

To that end, the interdisciplinary virtual institute will provide scientific researchers with access to full-time professional software engineers and state-of-the-art technology to develop high-quality, maintainable, and adaptable software. Each software center will collaborate closely with the network of virtual institutes, currently focused on the areas of Earth science and astrophysics and projected to grow this year into areas such as advanced computing and manufacturing.

“Through its software development for science, VISS will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by supporting longer-term platforms and systems, encouraging best practices in open science, and providing access to techniques such as high-end computing, massive databases, and machine learning,” said Schmidt Futures chief scientist Stuart Feldman.

“With this truly visionary new institute, Cambridge will blend its world-leading climate science, software engineering and computer science expertise,” said University of Cambridge vice-chancellor Stephen J. Toope. “This interdisciplinary powerhouse will enable the development of next-generation climate models. We are delighted to be partnering with Schmidt Futures and engaging with the international research community to inform the response to our most urgent global challenge.”

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