Logo of the Joint Lab HiRSE: Helmholtz Information - Research Software Engineering

The HiRSE Code Promotion - shining a light on your work

Software and code developed by researchers, postdocs, and students at German universities and research centres help power scientific research and discovery, yet the code developed is not always visible or recognised. That’s why in summer 2024, HiRSE launched the Code Promotion initiative to give research software the visibility it deserves.

The HiRSE team wants to bring your software to the attention of the RSE community and beyond. We’re looking for research software currently being created, extended, and/or maintained by people working at German institutions to join our latest initiative. This is not meant exclusively — we of course welcome also software written by international teams, as long as there is a substantial contribution coming from Germany.

To participate, provide us with the details of your software using our form, and we will create your promo slide that will be shown ahead of a HiRSE seminar and during HiRSE event breaks.

Quick overview

In 2024, within the first four weeks of launch, nearly 50 developers and teams submitted their code. The diversity of submissions is particularly notable. The contributions span multiple scientific disciplines and range from frontends to existing codes, to codes providing services, to simulation codes running on the largest supercomputers.

In July 2025, we hit an exciting milestone: 100 codes featured through the HiRSE Code Promotion initiative! This means over 100 researchers, postdocs, and students from German universities and research centres have showcased their software and research contributions to the broader Research Software Engineering community.

A common theme for many of them: the wish for sustainable funding not only for lighthouse projects and new developments, but also for maintaining established codes. Of course, they also want to grow their community and seek widespread use of their codes — otherwise they would not be here.

For more details (e.g. links to the codes) and to view it in your own time, please download the .pdf


The Research Software Directory

Since this is about visibility, awareness and promotion of reseach software, we would also like to highlight the Helmholtz Research Software Directory. If the software is at least co-developed at a Helmholtz centre, this is the place to put it. It is tailored to Research Software Engineers and Researchers from Helmholtz that want to promote or discover research software. The Helmholtz Research Software Directory is an adaption of the eScience Center’s Research Software Directory.