Neil Chue Hong (FBCS)

Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice & Director, Software Sustainability Institute

Biography

Background

I hold a Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice, and am the PI and Founding Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, a national facility for research software users and developers whose mission is to cultivate better, more sustainable, research software to enable world-class research.

From 2007-2010 I was Director of the OMII-UK, based at the University of Southampton, which provides and supports free, open-source software for the UK e-Research community. During this period, I was Technical Manager of the JISC-funded NeISS social simulation project, and Project Manager of the JISC-funded ENGAGE initiative, which interviewed 50+ researchers across the UK and commissioned 14 exemplar projects which addressed the current barriers to the use of e-Infrastructure in research domains including chemistry, Earth systems modelling, digital humanities, and medicine.

Previous to this, I worked at EPCC firstly as a technology transfer consultant working with Scottish SMEs and latterly as a Project Manager leading data access and integration projects (OGSA-DAI and DAIT), and collaborating with many other e-Science projects, including the EU FP6 NextGRID project.

I am the current Chair of UKRI/Met Office ExCALIBUR Steering Committee, a member of the BBSRC Tranformative Technologies SAP and EOSC Scholarly Infrastructures for Research Software Task Force, co-author of Best Practices for Scientific Computing and An Open Science Peer Reviewers Oath, co-organiser of the Software Engineering for Science workshop series, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Research Software.

Qualifications

MPhys (hons) 2:2 in Computational Physics, University of Edinburgh, 1999

Responsibilities & affiliations

Internal

  • University Senate
  • Research Cultures Working Group
  • Research Information Systems Governance Group
  • Digital Research Services Outreach Steering Committee
  • EPCC Research Ethics and Integrity Officer
  • EPCC Senior Management

External

  • UKRI / Met Office ExCALIBUR Steering Committee (Chair, 2020 -present)
  • BBSRC Transformative Technologies Strategic Advisory Panel (2020 - present)
  • EPSRC e-Infrastructure Strategic Advisory Team (Past Chair, 2017-2020)

Postgraduate teaching

MSc

  • Programming Skills

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

PhD

  • Rongrong Zhao (PhD Genetics and Genomics, 2020-) [Assistant Supervisor; Principal supervisor: Dr James Prendergast, Roslin Institute; Assistant Supervisors: Dr Musa Hassan, Roslin Institute; Dr Andrea Talenti, Roslin Institute]
  • Felicity Anderson (PhD, 2022-) [Principal Supervisor; Assistant supervisor: Dr Julien Sindt, EPCC]

MSc

  • Shivamm Gupta (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2021-2022)
  • Xiaoyu Ren (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2021-2022)

Past PhD students supervised

PhD

  • Adam Clement (PhD Genetics and Genomics, 2014-2021) [Assistant Supervisor; Principal supervisor: Dr James Prendergast, Roslin Institute]

MSc

  • Vinay Sudhakaran (MSc in HPC, 2010-2011)
  • Feng Hua (MSc in HPC, 2011-2012)
  • Visakh Muraleedharan (MSc in HPC, 2011-2012)
  • Raluca Andra (MSc in HPC, 2012-2013)
  • Antons Treikalis (MSc in HPC, 2012-2013)
  • Colin MacLean (MSc in HPC, 2013-2014)
  • Zhiyao Qian (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2018-2019)
  • Yajuan Zhang (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2018-2019)
  • Chuxi Nan (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2019-2020)
  • Kaining Zhao (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2019-2020)
  • Hisham Mamode (MSc in Data Science, Technology and Innovation, 2019 - 2021)
  • Ruiying Yang (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2020-2021)

Research summary

My current research interests are in community engagement and development, software sustainability and the research software ecosystem. I work with research communities across the UK and globally to promote and enable the improvement of important research software through consultative advice; collaborative partnerships; and long-term engagement.

Research activities

View all 144 activities on Research Explorer

Current project grants

The UK Software Sustainability Institute: Phase 3 (EP/S021779/1, PI) – EPSRC (lead), AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC – £6.6m – Dec 2018 – Nov 2023
CompBioMed2: A Centre of Excellence in Computational Biomedicine (Co-I) – EC - £324k – Nov 2018 – Oct 2022

Past project grants

Data Skills Workforce Development - Data Carpentry Workshops (Co-I) - SFC Upskilling Fund - £50k - Aug 2019 - Jul 2020
Research Data Shared Service: Software Deposit and Preservation Guidance (PI) – Jisc - £30k – Aug 2017 – Jul 2018
The Software Sustainability Institute: Phase 2 (EP/N006410/1, PI) – EPSRC (lead), BBSRC, ESRC - £4.4m – Jun 2015 – May 2019
Microsoft Azure Research Award (PI) – Microsoft - $20k – Mar 2015 – Mar 2016
SI2-CHE: Development and Deployment of Chemical Software for Advanced Potential Energy Surfaces (EP/K040138/1, Co-I) – EPSRC - £361k – Apr 2013 – Apr 2016
Software Hub (Co-I) – Jisc - £70k – Oct 2012 – Mar 2014
AWS in Education grant award (PI) – Amazon - $10k – Mar 2012 – Mar 2014
Rapport: Robust Application Porting for HPC in the Cloud (EP/I034246/1, Co-I) – EPSRC - £87k – Feb 2011 – Oct 2011
SSI: UK Software Sustainability Institute (EP/H043160/1, PI) – EPSRC - £5.5m – Jun 2010 – May 2016
OGSA-DAI: an OMII-UK Node – Services and Middleware for e-Science (EP/D043956/1, Researcher Co-I) – EPSRC - £1.9m – Nov 2005 – Mar 2010
DIALOGUE - Data Integration Applications: Linking Organisations to Gain Understanding & Experience (EP/C531248/1, Researcher Co-I) – EPSRC - £39k – Apr 2005 – Apr 2007

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