CROSS, which is housed within the Baskin School of Engineering, encourages open source software produced by graduate student researchers as a pathway to transfer their cutting-edge technology to an industrial environment. Engineering students learn best practices to get involved in open source communities, create healthy developer networks around their software, and may even receive funding to pursue high-impact research. CROSS seeks to protect and nurture software developed as part of larger research projects, which can often be left to languish when graduate students or postdocs graduate from the university.
“A lot of open source software is developed on campuses, but we tend to treat it as a sideline,” Davis said. “We are wasting a lot of resources at the university by not treating [the software] as a first class part of what we do. We are trying to provide support structures for these projects to continue both in helping research teams understand how they can improve the continuation of their projects and what are the best practices around open source; and in terms of finding funding specifically for open source software projects.”
Davis has been involved with CROSS on a planning and decision-making level having served for several years as a faculty advisor to the CROSS Advisory Board, which includes a number of open source and industry experts. In this position, he served as a bridge between industry advisors on the board of directors and faculty and student projects, and gained insight into ongoing grant distribution and active projects at the center. Davis’ former postdoctoral fellow, Emily Lovell, also worked as a CROSS-supported Open Source Incubator Fellow.
Davis inherits this position from Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Carlos Maltzahn, who was the founding director and visionary force behind the center. Maltzahn retired in December 2023.
Davis takes on this leadership role at a time of growing industry and government interest in investing in open source software and the surrounding research ecosystems. Davis said increased federal funding opportunities for open source software reflect recognition of this viable method for increasing the social impact of academic research — and CROSS aims to capitalize on this increased awareness and investment.
“The current research environment reflects what we have known and practiced at Baskin Engineering for years – that open source is a critically important method for communicating the fruits of academia to the wider world,” said Alexander Wolf, dean of the Baskin School of Engineering. “I look forward to seeing CROSS take advantage of this environment, with James at the helm.”
In this regard, Davis will also lead the charge for the further development of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at UC Santa Cruz. The UCSC OSPO effort, launched in 2022 with support from the Sloan Foundation, now involves collaboration among six UC campuses to create an open source “center of gravity” for the entire UC system.
Davis also hopes to continue efforts to expand the relationship between CROSS and its supporting industry partners by moving to a more agile funding and sponsorship model that will be innovative in its approach to expanding the impact of open source software created at UCSC.
In addition to expanding funding opportunities, Davis aims to bring CROSS’s mission to more students across campus. He hopes the collaborative, community-oriented approach central to CROSS will be able to engage more students who have historically been underrepresented in engineering fields.
This could include expanding the CROSS-led Open Source Research Experience in which students connect with industry members to receive mentorship and participate in open source-based summer internships. Last year, the program brought students from historically black colleges and universities to UCSC’s campus with the goal of increasing students’ real-world coding and programming skills.