University of Texas Austin#
OSPO: The UT Austin-OSPO is situated across the university in the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), the central IT office, (CIO), the School of Information (iSchool), and the University Libraries.
Personnel: PI - Dr. Jennifer Schopf (TACC), co-PI and Director - Dr. Angela Newell (CIO), co-PI - Dr. James Howison (iSchool), co-PI - Michael Shensky (Libraries).
Member of: Center for Networked Information, CURIOSS, HELIOS
General Description#
The UT Austin-OSPO engages with researchers in experiencing and expanding their knowledge and use of open source software through events and talks, a Case Study series, immersive training, one-to-one consultations, Hackathons, and more.
The OSPO hostS a research matching program, connecting researchers with student talent and students with research software engineering experience.
It also partners with Discovery to Impact to help researchers understand licensing, sharing, and commercialization potential of their software.
UT Austin-OSPO is one of the few OSPOs that works with a super computing center.
Core Objectives and Activities#
Training provision
Personalized Consultations
Lecture series
A help desk network
Publishing of best practices
Events that enable students, faculty, and staff engage with open source software
Primary Contacts#
Other Context#
The UT Austin-OSPO coordinates a shared open infrastructure for software development, establishing a hub for open source support that enables the university to leverage and formalize the pre-existing infrastructure on campus, unify and expand the work already being done in this space, create additional opportunities for engagement among faculty and students, and foster interdisciplinary connections across departments and units.
The UT Austin-OSPO project was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, along with several other OSPOs in 2022. Building on the success of the UT Austin-OSPO, funding was awarded in 2026 to develop a multi-campus OSPO network in the University of Texas system. The Texas-OSPO network will act as a centralized resource to offer open source best practices and to provide training and consultation services across its campuses, while connecting a systemwide community of researchers and developers. More information here.