ScienceServe: Boosting Research Software at Helmholtz

The ScienceServe call announced last year is now entering the project phase.
17 projects have been selected, starting in 2026 with a duration of 12 months.

Together, these projects address a wide range of scientific challenges – from understanding climate and hydrological processes, to analysing biomedical data, simulating materials, or controlling large-scale research infrastructures. What they have in common is their reliance on research software that is already scientifically impactful, but now needs targeted investment to become more interoperable, maintainable, or ready for long-term use.

In addition to funding, all projects will benefit from the support and network of the Helmholtz Information and Data Science Platforms and friends, and in particular from HIFIS, through hands-on support by our RSE team.

Funded Projects

ODIS2ODV

ocean-data visualisation
Field: Earth & Environment
Center: AWI

Ocean scientists rely on ODV and webODV to analyse and visualise large volumes of marine observations collected over decades. This project strengthens ODV by connecting it directly to the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS), enabling seamless discovery and use of curated ocean metadata and datasets.

VM-FIRE

HPC, simulation
Field: Matter
Centers: KIT, FZJ

VM-FIRE evolves the VirtMat Tools, a computational simulation suite for materials research, into a general-purpose platform that supports reproducible and efficient simulations across scientific domains.

ASPECT-NEXT

geodynamics, GPU
Field: Earth & Environment
Centers: GEOMAR, GFZ

ASPECT is a widely used community code for simulating mantle convection, tectonics, and planetary evolution, underpinning hundreds of geodynamics studies. ASPECT-NEXT prepares the software for new scientific questions and modern hardware, including GPU-based architectures.

mHMv6

hydrology, climate-impact, modelling
Field: Earth & Environment
Center: UFZ

The mesoscale Hydrologic Model (mHM) is central to hydrological forecasting and drought monitoring, including the German Drought Monitor. mHMv6 develops the next generation of mHM by restructuring the code base into a modular, extensible architecture.

BridgeSim

urban-mobility, simulation
Fields: Information, Transport
Center: FZJ

BridgeSim enhances JuPedSim, a framework to investigate pedestrian dynamics, by redesigning its interface to the traffic simulator SUMO, enabling large-scale, integrated simulations of pedestrians and vehicles.

MPSTools

geostatistics, spatial-data, modelling
Field: Earth & Environment
Center: UFZ

Multiple-point statistics are powerful methods for modelling complex spatial structures in environmental and geoscientific data, but accessible software has been lacking. MPSTools extends the established GSTools framework to make these methods broadly usable.

FLUXIBLE

metabolism, systems-biology, isotope-labelling
Fields: Earth & Environment, Health
Centers: FZJ, UFZ

Metabolic flux analysis using isotope labelling is a key method for understanding cellular metabolism in biotechnology, ecology, and medicine. FLUXIBLE transforms the 13CFLUX ecosystem into an accessible platform that supports diverse experimental workflows.

MATRIX

digital-twins, HPC, simulation
Fields: Information, Matter
Center: Hereon

Materials research increasingly relies on high-fidelity simulations to predict material behaviour under extreme conditions. MATRIX builds digital twins for materials science on top of the high-performance Trixi solver framework.

RiboVerse

rna-biology, genomics Field: Health
Centers: MDC, Helmholtz Munich

Translation regulation plays a crucial role in gene expression and RNA-based therapies. RiboVerse develops a modular software ecosystem for jointly analysing ribosome profiling (Ribo-Seq) and RNA-binding protein data (CLIP-Seq).
Existing tools are integrated, extended, and made sustainable to enable predictive modelling and translational biomedical applications.

BoostFastSurfer

neuroimaging
Field: Health
Center: DZNE

FastSurfer is a widely used AI-based tool for fast, automated analysis of brain MRI data, producing quantitative markers for neuroscience and clinical research. BoostFastSurfer strengthens the software’s long-term reliability and usability.

HeatHub

HPC, data-analytics, parallel-computing
Field: Information
Center: FZJ

The Helmholtz Analytics Toolkit (Heat) enables massively parallel data analytics on modern HPC systems using familiar Python workflows. HeatHub builds the surrounding ecosystem needed for long-term adoption and to lower the entry barrier for scientists and developers.

TangoServesScience

control-systems, cybersecurity, infrastructure, photon-science
Field: Matter
Centers: DESY, Hereon, HZDR, HI Jena (GSI)

Tango Controls is a core software platform for controlling large-scale scientific instruments in photon science and beyond. TangoServesScience strengthens Tango to meet modern security, maintainability, and usability requirements.

BIOVERSE

omics, single-cell, spatial-data
Field: Health
Centers: MDC, DKFZ

Single-cell and spatial omics research relies on rich software ecosystems in both R with Bioconductor and Python with scverse. BIOVERSE improves interoperability between these ecosystems to enable cross-language analysis workflows.

EYcalcPlus

photovoltaics, simulation
Field: Energy
Centers: KIT, HZB

Accurate prediction of photovoltaic energy yield is essential for designing and evaluating solar energy systems. EYcalcPlus unifies Helmholtz software for energy yield calculations, EYcalc and pv_tandem, into a single, flexible tool.

ESM-Tools+

climate-modelling, HPC
Field: Earth & Environment
Center: AWI

Earth System Models are critical for climate research but technically complex to deploy and operate. ESM-Tools simplifies running these models on HPC systems and sharing experiment configurations. ESM-Tools+ supports new simulation catalogues, refactoring, and improved error handling to lower entry barriers and strengthen sustainability.

NEPTOON-BOOST

hydrology, sensor-data
Field: Earth & Environment
Center: UFZ

Cosmic-ray neutron sensors provide unique insights into soil moisture dynamics at landscape scale. NEPTOON processes raw sensor data into reliable hydrological products.
NEPTOON-BOOST enables the transformation of NEPTOON into a sustainable, community-driven platform with standardized workflows, testing, and training.

SusFitQM

molecular-modelling, QM-MM, drug-design, simulation
Fields: Health, Matter
Centers: KIT, FZJ

Understanding molecular recognition is essential for drug discovery and materials design. SusFitQM links experimental data fitting, through KIT’s machine-learning-based titration-analysis toolkit, with quantum-mechanical simulations, through FZJ’s MiMic framework, in a single workflow.

What’s next?

Over the coming months, we will share updates from the individual projects and link to further resources as the work progresses. Many of the funded software packages are already listed in the Helmholtz Research Software Directory – ScienceServe will help strengthen their quality, sustainability, and scientific impact across the Association.

Interested in Research Software Engineering?

• Learn how HIFIS supports research software
• Discover more Helmholtz software at helmholtz.software
• Get in touch with us at support@hifis.net