Sustainable Lifecycle Management for Scientific Software (SuLMaSS) - Software Dissemination and Infrastructure Development Driven by a Cardiac Electrophysiology Simulator

• Applicants: Privatdozent Dr.-Ing. Axel Loewe; Dr.-Ing. Gunnar Seemann; Dr.-Ing. Michael Selzer; Professor Dr. Achim Streit; Dr. Arne Upmeier, since 7/2020
• Subject Area: Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology ; Cardiology, Angiology ; Medical Physics, Biomedical Technology
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391128822

In the proposed SuLMaSS project, we will advance, develop, build, evaluate, and test infrastructure for sustainable lifecycle management of scientific software. The infrastructure will be tested and evaluated by the existing cardiac electrophysiology simulation software project acCELLerate, which is currently in the prototype state and will be advanced towards optimal usability and a large and active user community. Thus, we will design and implement application-oriented e-research technologies.The impact of the SuLMaSS project is three-fold: First, we are going to provide a high quality, user-friendly cardiac electrophysiology simulation software package that accommodates attestable needs of the scientific community. Second, we will deliver infrastructure components for testing, safe-keeping, referencing, and versioning of all phases of the lifecycle of scientific software, which has been advanced, evaluated, and thoroughly tested by acCELLerate during SuLMaSS. Third, the way software lifecycle management will be performed for acCELLerate during SuLMaSS will be documented and dis-seminated and will serve as a best practice example for sustainable scientific software also for other communities. Scientific software development in Germany and beyond will benefit through both the aforementioned best practice role model and the advanced infrastructure that will, in part, be available for external projects as well.Particularly, we are going to advance acCELLerate based on a detailed user needs analysis and a target performance comparison. Achieving the targets, we will extend the unique proposition of the software and hence add value for the wider scientific cardiac electrophysiology community. By making the user-friendly software available under an open source license, we will provide the optimal solution for a large share of the people and research groups that can potentially leverage computational cardiac modeling methods. Synchronously, we will explore, evaluate and establish an institutional infrastructure that provides the basis for sustainable research software development, testing, supply, usage, maintenance, and support. acCELLerate will drive and showcase the infrastructure formation, thus serving as a lighthouse project. The developed infrastructure can be used by other scientific software projects in the future based on the best practice example acCELLerate demonstrated within SuLMaSS.SuLMaSS aims to support the full research lifecycle from exploration through conclusive analysis and publication, to archival, and sharing of data and source code, thus increasing the quality of research results. Moreover, we will support the full lifecycle of research software from requirements management and architecture design through community-based collaborative development and advancement, to testing, archival, change management, continuous integration, dissemination, and user documentation, thus improving sustainability of research software.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia, USA
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Gerd Gidion; Professor Dr. Stefan Luther; Professor Dr. Philipp Maass; Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank B. Sachse
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Doris Fürtinger; Dr. Jussi Koivumäki; Professor Dr. Peter Kotanko; Professor Alexander Panfilov, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Stefano Severi; Professorin Dr. Olga Solovyova; Professor Yuri Vassilevski, Ph.D.
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Frank Scholze, until 7/2020