We are pleased to announce the 2026 class of Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellows: six Fellows and six Honorable Mentions.
We sincerely thank all fellowship applicants. The broad range of creative and interesting proposals made the selection process difficult.
The BSSw Fellowship Program gives recognition and funding to leaders and advocates of high-quality scientific software. Each 2026 Fellow will receive up to $25,000 for an activity that promotes better scientific software, such as organizing a workshop, preparing a tutorial, or creating content to engage the scientific software community.
The BSSw Fellowship Program is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE, via the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research and the National Nuclear Security Administration's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The BSSw Fellowship Program enables a more robust approach toward pioneering the future of advanced computing ecosystems and leadership in science and engineering. The program enhances workforce development and pathways to NSF and DOE software communities, through nurturing a network of people who advance software practices as a fundamental aspect of increasing overall scientific productivity.
2026 BSSw Fellows
Suzan Anwar, Philander Smith University
Associate Professor, Computer Science
BSSw focus: Sustainable AI: Best Practices for Reproducible Scientific Software Development
Jakob Bludau, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Computational Sciences and Engineering Division
BSSw focus: Performance-Portable Design Patterns: A Gallery and Community Hub
Mary Goldman, University of California, Santa Cruz
Design and Outreach Engineer, Genomics Institute
BSSw focus: User Experience Design for RSEs
Drew Paine, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
User Experience Research Lead, Scientific Data Division
BSSw focus: Growing & Tending User Experience Resources for Scientific Software Communities
Parmanand Sinha, University of Chicago
Computational Scientist, Research Computing Center
BSSw focus: From One-Off Containers to HPC Production Science: Reproducibility Patterns for Multi-Service Workflows
Victor Weeks, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Software Engineer, Atmospheric Science
BSSw focus: Maintaining Scientific Rigor in AI-Assisted Development: A Validation-Focused Methodology
2026 BSSw Honorable Mentions
Floor Broekgaarden, University of California, San Diego
Assistant Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics
Matthew Feickert, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Research Scientist, Data Science Institute
Joseph Frimpong, Argonne National Laboratory
Postdoctoral Researcher, Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials
Erin Higgins, Carnegie Mellon University
Postdoctoral Researcher, University Libraries
Abena Primo, Huston-Tillotson University
Associate Professor, Computer Science
Daniel Steger, Center For Open Science
Technical Community Manager, Open Science Framework
About the BSSw Fellowship
The main goal of the BSSw Fellowship Program is to foster and promote practices, processes, and tools to improve developer productivity and software sustainability of scientific codes. BSSw Fellows are selected annually based on an application process that includes the proposal of an activity that promotes better scientific software. Subscribe to the BSSw email digest for notification about next year’s call for applications, which will be announced in summer 2026. More information:
Stay tuned for more from the 2025 BSSw Fellows.
Contribute to the BSSw Site
Also, we want and need contributions from the international community for the BSSw site. If you have expertise that can help other scientific software teams, we encourage you to contribute an article or pointer to good work. See details on how to contribute to BSSw.
Author bio
Elsa Gonsiorowski is Coordinator of the BSSw Fellowship Program, a member of the PESO Project team, and HPC I/O support specialist at Livermore Computing, LLNL.
