ABSTRACT
Better Scientific Software (BSSw) does not happen without learning and implementing BETTER – Planning, Development, Performance, Reliability, Collaboration, and Skills.

Meet the 2019 BSSw Fellows and discover how their work will help your scientific software project be BETTER by:

 1) Learning best practices for developing research software [Better Skills],

 2) Reducing technical debt through reproducible containers [Better Development],

 3) Navigating the social challenges in the evolution of a scientific software project [Better Collaboration], and

 4) Improving the reliability through analyzing and debugging floating-point software [Better Reliability].

In this breakout, you will hear from four practitioners and leaders of better scientific software practices, the 2019 BSSw Fellowship Awardees, with time for engagement to discuss your project needs.

DESCRIPTION
Topic details
BSSw Fellows are chosen annually to develop a funded activity that promotes better scientific software, such as organizing a workshop, preparing a tutorial, or creating content to engage the scientific software community. Their expertise is diverse and they are often leaders in their own community; however, no pre-existing connections are required to DOE and the Exascale Computing Project community. 

2019 Fellows are:

• Rene Gassmoeller (University of California, Davis):
  Rene has significant experience as a scientific software maintainer for the geodynamics community. He is using his expertise and experience to create guides and tutorials about managing the community around a scientific software project, including navigating the social aspects.

• Ignacio Laguna Peralta (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory):
  Ignacio has significant experience in programming models and systems, and has been working on tools for the Sierra HPC system at LLNL, #2 on the Top500. He has created tutorials on tools to debug and improve the reliability of scientific applications, with emphasis on floating-point software defects what are difficult to debug.

• Tanu Malik (DePaul University):
  Tanu received a 2019 NSF Career award for her work on computational reproducibility and leads a group focused on developing methods and system for improving reproducible science in computational and data science disciplines. She is teaching how to reduce technical debt through using container technology and contributing to Trusted Tools.
• Kyle Niemeyer (Oregon State University):
  Kyle leads a research group focused on computational fluids modeling and teaches a 10-week course on research software development for more trustworthy, reusable and sustainable scientific software. He is condensing his course for intense hands-on bootcamps suitable for the ECP community.

Fellows are chosen for their potential impact on the ECP and broader community toward improving scientific software and overall productivity. During the 90-minute breakout session, each fellow will present their BSSw Fellowship work in a 15-minute presentation. The remaining time will be used to facilitate discussion and interaction between the Fellows and ECP community members in smaller groups.

Goals
The intent of this session is to create an opportunity for ECP projects and members to learn about better scientific software practices and engage with the 2019 BSSw Fellows to foster potential collaborations and integrate the BSSw Fellows into the ECP community. This will broaden the impact of the Fellows’ work and provide ECP community members with additional resources to improve their scientific software development practices. BSSw Fellows will benefit from learning about DOE & ECP project needs to better target their work.

Target audience