Large Awards
These projects strengthen key areas of UK research software by modernising major community tools, improving development workflows, and building sustainable contributor pipelines. Collectively, they enhance performance, governance, documentation, and training across domains ranging from quantum materials and statistical computing to palaeontology and urban climate modelling.
Funding: £422,934.85
Duration: 24 months
Team Details: Lead: Phil Hasnip (Univ. of York); Co-Leads: Matt Probert, Jonathan Yates, Peter Byrne; Partners: CCP9, CCP-NC, UKCP
Description: This project merges GPU and CPU branches, extends GPU acceleration to vibrational/NMR properties, improves usability via Spack/Easybuild, expands documentation and training, and formalises governance with an advisory panel and roadmap.
Impact: Broadens diverse developer community, delivers faster, reliable simulations for materials discovery, and embeds CASTEP in workflows.
Other relevant links: Castep Docs
General Area / Domain: Quantum materials modelling, HPC.
About the projectFunding: £483,046.64
Duration: 24 months
Team Details: Lead: Lewis A. Jones (UCL); International Co-Leads across Syracuse, GFZ, STRI, USP, Birmingham, Lausanne
Description: This project audits and refactors R packages, expands contributor guidelines, runs training and mentorship programmes, and establishes governance to transition to community ownership.
Impact: Strengthens open science practices in palaeontology, equips ECRs with software skills, and secures UK leadership in methods.
Other relevant links: GitHub
General Area / Domain: Palaeontology, open science.
About the projectFunding: £499,981.21
Duration: 24 months
Team Details: Lead: Aad van Moorsel (Univ. of Birmingham); Co-Leads: Adrian Garcia, Heather Turner, Ella Kaye; International Co-Leads: Gabriel Becker, Kylie Bemis, Mikael Jagan, Jeroen Ooms, Peter Dalgaard, Simon Urbanek; Collaborators: R Core Team; Partners: R Consortium, R Foundation, Posit, Google, A2-Ai.
Description: This project will mentor a new cohort of expert contributors to R, modernise development infrastructure and governance, implement a project-wide code of conduct, and strengthen communication and outreach.
Impact: Secures continuity of R Core expertise, fosters diversity and sustainability in the contributor community, and improves governance for a language critical to global research.
Other relevant links: Contributor resources
General Area / Domain: Statistical computing, data science, research software sustainability
About the projectFunding: £399,674.41
Duration: 24 months
Team Details: Lead: Dr Ting Sun (UCL); Co-Lead: Prof. Sue Grimmond (Reading); Partners: Arup UK, Cardiff University
Description: This project modernises the urban climate model SUEWS with modular architecture, CI/CD, AI-assisted accessibility (MCP), Scientific Consistency Framework and gold validation datasets; builds contributor pipeline via training and governance.
Impact: Secures UK urban climate modelling capacity, reduces maintenance costs, and supports climate resilience planning.
Other relevant links: GitHub
General Area / Domain: Urban climate modelling, resilience
About the projectSmall Awards
These nine projects showcase a diverse suite of UK-led research software tools, upgrading legacy systems, strengthening performance, and improving accessibility across fields from veterinary evidence synthesis and protein visualisation to neuroscience, astronomy, quantum materials, and glacier modelling. Each project enhances sustainability through improved documentation, governance, testing, and community development, ensuring these tools remain reliable, open, and widely adoptable. Together, they secure critical research infrastructure and broaden participation in software-driven science.
Funding: £63,248.17
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Marnie Brennan (Univ. of Nottingham); Co-Leads: Tom Giles, Philip Van Krimpen
Description: This project refactors legacy evidence platform with secure modern stack, migrates content, implements WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, improves contributor documentation and governance via scoping surveys and focus groups with users.
Impact: Preserves a critical UK-led evidence resource, enhances usability and inclusivity, and models lean legacy renewal.
General Area / Domain: Veterinary medicine, evidence-based practice.
About the projectFunding: £117,607.00
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Prof. Stuart Littlefair (Univ. of Sheffield); Co-Lead: Dr Martin Dyer
Description: This project removes legacy dependencies (PGPLOT), adopts uniform performance approach, structures package for PyPI release, improves documentation with contributor guide, adds test suite, and runs workshops to expand contributors.
Impact: Secures essential high-speed astronomy infrastructure, widens user base and contributions, reduces maintenance burden.
Other relevant links: GitHub
General Area / Domain: Astronomy, high-speed imaging.
About the projectFunding: £149,965.31
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Dr Jason Rothman (UCL); Co-Lead: Prof. R. Angus Silver
Description: This project ports NeuroMatic from Igor Pro to open-source Python (pyNeuroMatic), adds GUI, standard data format support, history logs, extensive documentation and community outreach.
Impact: Democratises advanced electrophysiology tools, enhances reproducibility and FAIR practices in neuroscience.
Other relevant links: pyNeuroMatic
General Area / Domain: Neuroscience, electrophysiology.
About the projectFunding: £143,754.74
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Maria J. Martin (EMBL-EBI); Developers: Daniel Rice, Aurélien Luciani
Description: This project refactors architecture, implements Canvas/WebGL rendering, flexible data loading and configurable tracks; delivers interactive documentation playground, webinar and hackathon; formalises governance and sustainability plan.
Impact: Maintains ProtVista as cornerstone of protein science, improves performance and community-driven development.
General Area / Domain: Bioinformatics, protein visualisation.
About the projectFunding: £149,941.57
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Fabien Maussion (Univ. of Bristol); Co-Leads: James Thomas, Francesca Pianosi; RSE: Nicolas Gampierakis; RIA: Chloe Hancock; Partners: Univ. of Edinburgh, Leeds Beckett, BGS, UNIL, CMU, Univ. of Bremen
Description: This project upgrades the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM) into a future-proof, machine-learning-ready platform with a modern configuration system (Hydra), cloud-ready outputs, and improved documentation and training pathways, including a global train-the-trainers programme.
Impact: Secures long-term UK-led glacier modelling capacity, supports IPCC assessments, improves reproducibility and global access to glacier data.
Other relevant links: OGGM-Edu
General Area / Domain: Cryospheric sciences, climate modelling
About the projectFunding: £137,141.00
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Dr James Trayford (Univ. of Portsmouth); Partner: Ordnance Survey; Audio Universe collaboration
Description: This project refactors the STRAUSS sonification library for performance (C/C++/Cython), implements CI, develops a high-level interface, and grows adoption via webinars, hackathons, and champions.
Impact: Elevates sonification to mainstream data interface, improves accessibility for blind/low-vision users across STEM.
General Area / Domain: HCI, accessibility, data sonification.
About the projectFunding: £150,000.00
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Prof. Jean-Baptiste Lugagne (Univ. of Oxford); Co-Leads: Prof. Harrison Steel, Dr Idris Kempf; Dr Virgile Andreani (INRIA). Collaborators: INRIA, EEBio
Description: This project strengthens DeLTA’s AI platform for real-time microscopy: expands tests and validation, modularises API, reduces dependencies, improves documentation and governance; community building via Image.sc and PyOpenSci.
Impact: Positions DeLTA as trusted platform for engineering biology, enabling diagnostics, biotech and healthcare workflows.
Other relevant links: Docs
General Area / Domain: Bioengineering, AI microscopy.
About the projectFunding: Small award; £131,729.84
Duration: 12 months
Team Details: Lead: Prof. Jonathan Yates (Oxford); Co-Leads: Prof. Arash Mostofi (Imperial), Jerome Jackson (STFC); Partners: CCP9, CASTEP Developers, QE Foundation, VASP, and six others.
Description: This project supports adoption of the v4.0 library interface, produces video tutorials, merges key community method developments, and implements GPU offloading (OpenMP).
Impact: Maintains central utility in materials modelling ecosystem; improves scalability and interoperability across 50+ codes.
Other relevant links: GitHub
General Area / Domain: Computational materials science, electronic structure.
About the project
