Where to find programming projects that help science? [closed]

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I would like to work on a programming project in my spare time and would like to know if there is a project where I can help the science community in some way?

Cicelycicenia answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:2 Comment(0)

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Sure, plenty! I see I'm not the first to think of numerical computation libraries like Numpy/Scipy - the code in that is actually fairly mature but they could certainly use help documenting. There's also GNU Octave, which does much of the same things as Numpy but doesn't require Python. A slightly related area in which there's a lot of work to do is computer algebra systems (CAS), basically open source equivalents of Mathematica; for example Maxima, and more are listed at http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wdj/sigsam/opensource_math.html. You could also help with visualization libraries, i.e. creation of 2D and 3D plots and figures. For Scipy the most commonly used plot generator is Matplotlib, for example. There are also loads of more specialized data visualization tools that I'm sure you can find with a few searches.

One area that I personally think needs a lot of work is creating GUIs for the programs mentioned in the previous paragraph; one major advantage that commercial programs like Matlab and Mathematica enjoy over their open source equivalents is easy-to-use graphical interfaces. Having a nice usable interface would be great for scientists who may not be skilled in command-line-fu, but open source projects have a long way to go if they're going to catch up.

Merissameristem answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:18 Comment(0)

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Projects like scipy and numpy are largely contributed by the scientific community. I'm sure they would appreciate any help you thought you could provide.

Puss answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:6 Comment(0)

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I know BOINC is always looking for help

Edit: Here is their programming help page http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/DevProjects

Islaen answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:7 Comment(0)

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The Bio* projects like BioPerl, BioPython, or BioRuby would certainly like some help, too.

Anhwei answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:57 Comment(0)

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In addition to searching open source projects online, you can try to contact your local university and ask if any of their researchers (students or faculty) need development help.

If you are still looking, feel free to contact me via my profile page - I know of a hardware product that needs software - it is used for research (chemistry and biology)

Irishirishism answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:3 Comment(0)

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http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=science

Vulgus answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:5 Comment(0)

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The nuclear ad particle physics communities make heavy use of ROOT, which is developed using an open source methodology. They accept suggestions and patches without much trouble. The main work is in C++, but there are binding and support for other languages as well.

I'm sure that other disciplines have their own domain specific tools. For instance, I know that there are open Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element systems.

Have a look around. While domain knowledge would be helpful, most big tools are going to need help with routine stuff like RDBMS access, GUIs, documentation, and so on...

Strictly answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:23 Comment(0)

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You can discover the current problems of Science by reading the abstracts of the academic journals. e.g. the Bioinformatics journal.

A few examples:

Find a faster/efficient methods to assemble a huge set of short DNA reads:
Find a way to build an efficient social scientific network
Find a way to compare thousand of human genomes
....

you could also propose your help on Nature Network:Collaboration or FriendFeed: The life scientists

Opinion answered 19/2, 2009 at 20:39 Comment(0)

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There are many exicting opportunities in chemistry. There is a strong Open Source community, much of which is organized under the Blue Obelisk (http://www.blueobelisk.org). There have been major contributions in visualisation and algorithms which did not need previous chemical knowledge and the community is very welcoming to anyone who wishes to help.

For an example of the standard which has been achieved take a look at Jmol which visualizes molecules and other chemistry in 3D (http://www.jmol.org);

There is also real opportunity to do porting between platforms/languages. The commonest ones are Java, Python, C++ and we have been working in C#. You don't have to be an ace programmer either - contributions to data standards, data resources, tutorials, packaging, installers, testing, etc. are all highly valued.

Some of these projects are within the top 100-500 projects on Sourceforge.

Ackerley answered 25/7, 2009 at 16:38 Comment(0)

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Don't forget that if you find a project to be a bit over your head or you aren't able to really contribute, but you still like the idea of it, you can always donate!

Jaramillo answered 25/7, 2009 at 16:40 Comment(0)

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