Building Open Source Capacity at Scale — University OSPOs as Engines for SDG Impact

Over the past few years, the number of OSPOs and OSPO-like activities in universities and research institutions has grown significantly. Many of those activities are designed to help deliver the SDGs. This session is an opportunity to explore what has been done, share what is in progress, and think together about how academic open source can do more to drive real SDG impact.

The session will begin with some lightning talks highlighting initiatives that show what this looks like in practice. The UN's Reboot the Earth hackathon series has brought university OSPOs into direct collaboration with students and communities working on climate and food security challenges: at CMU Africa in Kigali, students from the University of Rwanda built open source tools connecting rural farmers to markets; at UC Santa Cruz, the UC OSPO Network brought together students, CAL FIRE, and emergency responders to build AI tools for wildfire detection and response. We will also hear from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), whose NSF Leadership Class Facility (tacc.utexas.edu) gives researchers worldwide access to high performance computing, with active global partnerships and programs like Advanced Computing for Social Good that connect this infrastructure directly to public benefit.

These framing talks will be followed by an interactive workshop to identify shared priorities, surface connections across institutions, and explore what it would take to do more of this work together.

Partners: Community for University and Research Institution OSPOs (CURIOSS)