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The UCAR Software Engineering Assembly (SEA) exists to serve the interests of the software engineering community at UCAR and NCAR. All members are encouraged to interact with the SE community at UCAR, participate in communities of practice, attend our yearly Improving Scientific Software (ISS) conference, share tips and techniques, and engage in respectful and constructive discussion.

Anyone who is interested in software engineering activities at UCAR is welcome to join the SEA (including external collaborators). For those members who are SE staff at UCAR and NCAR, the SEA is also a vehicle to provide input to and drive dialog with senior management. As membership is not limited to a single lab or facility, the SEA is uniquely positioned to provide a holistic view of the perspective of SEs across the institution and the common challenges we face.

Latest Updates🔗︎

ISS 2026 Abstract Deadline is Now January 30th

The deadline is fast approaching to submit abstracts to the 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference. The ISS Conference will be held April 6-10, 2026 in Boulder, CO with the theme of Maintaining the Joy of Software Development.

To give submitters a bit of extra time, we are extending the abstract submission deadline by one week to Friday January 30th, 2026 at 5 PM MT. We welcome anyone with an interest in improving scientific software design, quality, development, deployment, and support to submit an abstract for a talk, tutorial session, or panel. Student travel and registration support is available and submitters can also choose to participate in a conference proceeding.

We have also decided to move ISS 2026 from the previously announced NSF NCAR Mesa Lab location to our traditional home at the Center Green Campus. Due to facilities construction timeline changes, this venue is once again available to us and offers easier logistics for conference attendees. The conference will be hybrid, so virtual presentations are also welcome.

You may submit an abstract here and visit our conference website for more information.

Upcoming SEA Tutorial and Discussion: Fortran Unit Testing and pFUnit

Join the UCAR Software Engineering Assembly (SEA) at 2 pm on February 12th for a tutorial and open discussion on unit testing Fortran code with pFUnit, a Fortran testing framework developed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for testing high-performance Fortran libraries. In this session, NSF NCAR software engineer Andy Stokely will highlight how pFUnit simplifies the process of writing tests and lowers the barrier to adopting thorough testing practices in Fortran codebases. The session will begin with a tutorial demonstrating how pFUnit can be used to develop a Fortran library using Test-Driven Development (TDD).

Following the tutorial, the discussion will expand to examine the role of unit testing in scientific and high-performance Fortran development, including how testing can improve code quality, support long-term maintainability, and enable safer refactoring as requirements evolve. The conversation will also focus on how testing can facilitate more effective collaboration between software engineers and scientists. Participants are encouraged to share experiences, challenges, and perspectives related to adopting testing practices in scientific software projects.

Discussion topics will include:

  • Applying Test-Driven Development to Fortran libraries
  • Using unit tests to define expected behavior and verify correctness
  • How testing supports maintainability and safe refactoring
  • Ways unit testing can improve collaboration between scientists and software engineers

All are welcome, regardless of prior experience with pFUnit or unit testing. If you are UCAR/NCAR staff, please use this link to add the event to your Google Calendar. If you are not staff but would like to attend, email the SEA Committee for an invite link.

Reminder: Improving Scientific Software Conference Accepting Abstracts

The 2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference is accepting abstracts through January 23, 2026. The conference is planned for April 6-10, 2026 at NSF NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, CO with the theme being Maintaining the Joy of Software Development. We are accepting abstract submissions for talks, tutorials, and panel sessions, and presenters may attend either in person or virtually.

You have likely seen news coverage last week that the National Science Foundation (NSF) is planning a review of NSF NCAR's research and observational capabilities. The ISS Conference organizers have no additional details on the exact timing or scope of the review. We understand that this news may raise questions or concerns about any potential impacts on the conference. At this time, we do not expect any disruption and plan to continue with the conference as intended. We encourage all interested in participating to proceed with submissions. We will keep you updated if anything changes.

2026 Improving Scientific Software Conference now accepting abstracts

The UCAR Software Engineering Assembly's Improving Scientific Software Conference is returning in 2026! Next year's ISS will take place April 6-10, 2026 at NSF NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, CO. The theme of the conference will be:

Maintaining the Joy of Software Development.

We are now accepting abstract submissions for talks, tutorials, and panel sessions. As always, we welcome anyone with an interest in improving scientific software design, quality, development, deployment, and support. Abstracts are due by: Friday January 23, 2026. We plan to provide student support as funding allows and will accept paper submissions for a conference proceeding.

You may submit an abstract here and visit our conference website for more information.

Recorded Codee seminar is now available in Seminar Archive

A recording of the "Code Review and Testing with Codee" seminar on September 24, 2025 is now available on the UCAR SEA YouTube Channel. If you would like to follow up with Codee on opportunities to evaluate the platform with your code base, contact us and we can faciliate further conversation.

This seminar, and future SEA seminars, will be made available on the SEA Seminar archive. Stay tuned for future SEA seminar announcements, and please reach out to the SEA Steering Committee if you have ideas for future seminars.

Presenting the ISS 2025 Conference Proceedings

The 2025 Improving Scientific Software Proceedings Committee is excited to present the cumulative efforts of the many authors who wrote and submitted a paper to our Conference Proceedings - which are now accessible via the ISS 2025 Proceedings Gallery.

This year, we decided to experiment with using Jupyter Notebooks as the paper format instead of plain-text papers, allowing for greater expressiveness and the potential for interactivity in papers. This decision required additional work on behalf of both the submitters and the editorial team; we thank both for their efforts and enthusiasm which have helped to make this process a success.

The ISS Conference Committee is in the initial planning stages for the 2026 Conference. Stay tuned for additional details later this year.

SEA Seminar: Code Review and Testing with Codee

The UCAR Software Engineering Assembly is hosting a virtual seminar and demonstration of the Codee code review and testing platform at 9 AM MT on Wednesday, September 24th. We will welcome developers from Codee, who will demonstrate the platform and answer any questions you have. Codee is intended to simplify and accelerate code review and testing for Fortran/C/C++ code. The platform finds opportunities to secure, correct, modernize, port and optimize software, enforcing coding guidelines, streamlining integration, and ensuring portability. For more information on Codee, see this brochure.

The developers intend to demonstrate Codee using a relevant Weather and Climate code. Please reach out to Brian Vanderwende by September 2nd if you would like to provide your code base for the demonstration. Doing so would also give you a direct opportunity to see how Codee might apply to your code development workflow.

Use this event link to add the seminar to your Google Calendar.

Help provide ideas for future SEA events

The UCAR SEA would like your input on desired presenters and/or topics of interest for our event calendar for the rest of the 2025 calendar year. We have funds for FY2025 that we can use to invite (domestic) speakers, so we encourage you to be aspirational in your suggestions. We are open to any type of relevant event you'd like to suggest, but some examples include:

  • One-hour invited seminar talks
  • 1+ hour tutorials
  • Multi-day workshops

The SEA Committee will coordinate the logistics of funding the invited presented and advertising the event, and we can also organize times to meet with the presenter if that is of interest.

To submit your input, please fill out this brief 3-question survey. Thank you!

ISS 2025 Slides, Recordings, and Post-Conference Survey

The 2025 Improving Scientific Software Conference Committee would like to thank all presenters and attendees for making this year's Conference a success. We were happy to see valuable contributions from many different institutions and areas of study, as well as good discussion during the networking events and socials. If you registered for the conference, you should have received a post-conference survey. This survey will remain open until 10 May 2025, should you wish to provide us with feedback.

We have also posted the slides and recordings from each presentation and tutorial on the Online Conference Program. These materials are available to all.

In-person registration is now closed for ISS 2025

Registration for in-person attendance has now closed for this year's ISS Conference. Thank you to all who have signed up to join us in Boulder next month; we look forward to seeing you! If you have not yet registered but would still like to attend, virtual registration will remain open until the end of the day on April 3rd.

See our ISS 2025 Conference Site for more information about registration and our virtual conference program for a listing of all planned talks, tutorials, and events.