Celebrating Science's Hidden Heroes
From the background to the spotlight: The Helmholtz Software Award recognizes the often overlooked work of software developers in the association.
Many important milestones in research would not have been possible without scientific software. With the Helmholtz Software Award, the Helmholtz Association honors the outstanding work of its software engineers.
The idea for the award arose during a Helmholtz Incubator workshop. The initiative was spearheaded by Uwe Konrad, Head of the Central Department of Information Services and Computing at the HZDR.
"In science, this kind of work is often not sufficiently rewarded. I had already been involved in similar international projects and suggested developing a corresponding prize within the Helmholtz Association," explains Konrad. The prize is intended as a symbol of appreciation for the silent heroes of science who drive progress in their disciplines with their software solutions.
In science, this kind of work is often not sufficiently rewarded.
Uwe Konrad, Initiator of the Helmholtz Software Award
Award categories and evaluation
In order to reflect the diversity and different character of the software projects, the award consists of three prize categories. The main prize, the "Scientific Originality Award", is given for scientific excellence and success in the respective community, as evidenced by publications, for example. The "Sustainability Award" is reserved exclusively for open source software that is sustainable according to the FAIR principles. The third category, the "Newcomer Award", is aimed at promising young software projects and is of particular interest to doctoral researchers and early career research groups.
The call for entries was published in July of last year. The Helmholtz centers were invited to nominate up to three software projects for the award. The submitted programs were then evaluated in a two-stage process by national and international experts using a point system.
From a total of 42 submissions from 16 centers, the three winners were:
- Scientific Originality Prize
CellRank (dynamics from multi-view single-cell data)
Representative: Philipp Weiler (HMGU)
Learn more
- Sustainability Prize:
ESMValTool (Earth System Model Evaluation Tool)
Representative: Birgit Hassler (DLR)
Learn more
- Newcomer Prize:
openCARP (Cardiac Electrophysiology Simulator)
Representative: Axel Löwe (KIT)
Learn more
The award ceremony will take place at an Incubator workshop at the end of November.
All information on the call 2024 can be found here!
This year's call for proposals is again jointly organized by HIFIS - Helmholtz Federated IT Services, the Helmholtz Open Science Office, the HIRSE_PS project and HIDA.
