UW News

January 30, 2015

Town hall on campus Feb. 2 to discuss role of software in academia

UW News

The University of Washington’s eScience Institute and GitHub, a code-sharing and publishing service, are hosting a town hall discussion on campus 6-9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, to talk about the role of software in academic research today.

Six panelists will give short presentations, followed by a discussion moderated by Arfon Smith with GitHub. Dan Halperin, director of research in scalable data analytics at UW’s eScience Institute, and Marina Meila, a UW associate professor of statistics, will join other speakers from Amazon Web Services, University of California, Berkeley, and the National Science Foundation.

Speakers will talk about the role of software in academics and how institutions can adapt to support important software tools and the people who create them. Though used in research every day, software development and maintenance isn’t often considered a “creditable research activity,” the presentation’s announcement notes.

The town hall is in the UW’s Physics/Astronomy auditorium (PAA 102). It will be followed by a reception in the UW’s new data science studio.

The event is free and open to the public. Hold your spot by registering online.