The Eclipse Foundation Announces New Science Working Group

It’s a known fact that software is gradually becoming the most important quotient for the success of applied and basic scientific research. Most software formed during scientific research is used for single, specific purpose or for a single experiment without reusing.

To overcome these limitations and also to build reusable software, the Eclipse Foundation has launched Science Working Group, which brings industry, academia and governments together to create open source software used in basic scientific research.

The main idea behind the inaugural of the Eclipse Science Working Group is to create a set of open source software tools, components and systems that can be used by the widespread scientific research community. Founding members of the Eclipse Science Working Group are Oak Ridge National Labs, Diamond Light Source (News - Alert), Lablicate UG, Uppsala University, Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, MARINTEK, Kichwa Coders, Clemson University, Tech’Advantage and IBM.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, UK are the founding Steering Committee level members of the Science Working Group (SWG).

The group aims to work together to generate technologies used for interdisciplinary analysis of scientific data and will plan and envisage 1D, 2D and 3D data, and process and manage data for structured and unstructured grids. In addition, the group aims to develop modeling and simulation software for physical and social sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology and more.

Apart from this, the group plans to build infrastructure software to back scientific computing, such as tools job launching and monitoring, parallel debugging, and remote project management.

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation said, "Software is becoming increasingly important in all facets of society, including scientific research. So creating efficiencies in the scientific software development life-cycle is becoming increasingly important. We are thrilled to have world renowned research organizations, like Oak Ridge National Labs and Diamond Light Source, recognize that Eclipse Working Groups are a recognized way to encourage collaborative development and sharing of software assets."

 Milinkovich said the new Eclipse Science Working Group is off to a good start creating a community for the scientific software development.

The Eclipse Foundation has welcomed the companies, government agency, universities and research institution to join the foundation and be part of the scientific research.