2026-07-16 –, Thomas Swain Room
Open source software has fueled every major scientific discovery of the last two decades. Yet as scientific practice races toward agentic workflows, no-code interfaces, and AI-driven hypothesis testing, the open source infrastructure (and the maintainer communities who keep it alive) remain systemically underfunded and not yet designed for AI-native use.
Many foundational tools were built for human-in-the-loop workflows and need modernization to support AI applications or data-intensive model training workflows. At the same time, LLMs and agentic frameworks are increasingly becoming the frontend through which scientists access core capabilities provided by open source libraries, forcing many communities to adapt to use cases that were never part of their original roadmap. AI has also dramatically impacted software engineering practices and the ability for open source projects to vet and incorporate community contributions.
In May 2026, we launched the Open Source for Science Fund, a new multi-donor initiative designed with the precise goal of sustaining and evolving the open source stack that underpins science in the AI era. The Fund builds on six years of funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program, which deployed $58M in funding and supported a significant number of software projects in the scientific Python ecosystem.
With this BoF, we want to share early insights from the launch of the Fund and engage the SciPy community in identifying opportunities to design funding programs tailored to the evolving needs of scientists and the maintainer communities that support them"
Dario is the founder and director of the Open Source for Science Fund, a multi-donor fund by Renaissance Philanthropy launched in 2026 aiming to sustain and evolve the open source stack that powers scientific discovery. He previously led a portfolio of philanthropic investments in open science and open source at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, including the Essential Open Source Software for Science (EOSS) program, which supported for six years multiple libraries and communities in the scientific python ecosystem.