Neil Chue Hong (MPhys FBCS)

Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice & Director, Software Sustainability Institute

Biography

Background

Neil holds a Personal Chair in Research Software Policy and Practice, and is the PI and Founding Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, a national facility established in 2010 for research software users and developers, whose mission is to cultivate better, more sustainable, research software to enable world-class research. His research focuses on how software developed from and for research can be improved through the application of software engineering practices and development of communities, policies, training and incentives.

He advises many large scale investments in Digital Research Infrastructure, including as a current member of UKRI Advisory Group on Digital Research Infrastructure; the scientific advisory boards of the German infrastructures HIFIS, MaRDI and NFDIxCS; and co-founder and board member of the Research Software Alliance. Previously, he chaired the EPSRC e-Infrastructure Strategic Advisory Team and the UKRI/Met Office ExCALIBUR Steering Committee, and was a member of the BBSRC Transformative Technologies Strategic Advisory Panel, NERC Digital Research Infrastructure Investment Board, and STFC Particle Physics Technology Advisory Panel. His work on research software standards and policy includes co-chairing the FAIR for Research Software WG, Software Citation Implementation WG, and RDA Software Source Code IG; and being a member of the EOSC FAIR in Practice TF, EOSC Scholarly Infrastructures for Research Software TF, and the OECD Expert Group on Building Digital Workforce Capacity and Skills for Data-Intensive Science.

He has worked for many years on understanding the role and value of software in the scholarly ecosystem, and is a member of the REF2029 Research Diversity Advisory Panel and representative on Main Panel B. He is the co-author of Best Practices for Scientific Computing, the FAIR Principles for Research Software, and An Open Science Peer Reviewers Oath, co-organiser of the Software Engineering for Science workshop series, and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Research Software.

From 2007-2010 he was Director of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII-UK), based at the University of Southampton, which provided and supported free, open-source software for the UK e-Research community. During this period, he was Technical Manager of the JISC-funded NeISS social simulation project, and Project Manager of the JISC-funded ENGAGE initiative, which interviewed 50+ researchers across the UK and commissioned 14 exemplar projects which addressed the current barriers to the use of e-Infrastructure in research domains including chemistry, Earth systems modelling, digital humanities, and medicine.

Previous to this, he worked at EPCC firstly as a technology transfer consultant working with Scottish SMEs and latterly as a Project Manager leading data access and integration projects (OGSA-DAI and DAIT), and collaborating with many other e-Science projects, including the EU FP6 NextGRID project.

He and his co-authors won the LIBER Award for Library Innovation in 2021 for their work on software citation.

He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MPhys in Computational Physics.

 

Qualifications

MPhys (hons) 2:2 in Computational Physics, University of Edinburgh, 1999

Responsibilities & affiliations

Internal

  • University Senate
  • Research Cultures Forum
  • Research Information Systems Governance Group
  • Digital Research Services Outreach Steering Committee
  • EPCC Research Integrity Officer
  • EPCC Senior Management

External

  • REF2029 Research Diversity Advisory Panel (2025 - present)
  • UKRI Advisory Group on Digital Research Infrastructure (2023 - present)

Postgraduate teaching

MSc

  • Programming Skills
  • Practical Software Development

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

PhD

  • Felicity Anderson (PhD, 2022-) [Principal Supervisor; Assistant supervisor: Dr Julien Sindt, EPCC]

MSc

  • Muhammed Murat Kurmuz (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2025-2026)

Past PhD students supervised

PhD

  • Adam Clement (PhD Genetics and Genomics, 2014-2021) [Assistant Supervisor; Principal supervisor: Dr James Prendergast, Roslin Institute]
  • Rongrong Zhao (PhD Genetics and Genomics, 2020-2024) [Assistant Supervisor; Principal supervisor: Dr James Prendergast, Roslin Institute; Assistant Supervisors: Dr Musa Hassan, Roslin Institute; Dr Andrea Talenti, Roslin Institute]

MSc

  • Vinay Sudhakaran (MSc in HPC, 2010-2011)
  • Feng Hua (MSc in HPC, 2011-2012)
  • Visakh Muraleedharan (MSc in HPC, 2011-2012)
  • Raluca Andra (MSc in HPC, 2012-2013)
  • Antons Treikalis (MSc in HPC, 2012-2013)
  • Colin MacLean (MSc in HPC, 2013-2014)
  • Zhiyao Qian (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2018-2019)
  • Yajuan Zhang (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2018-2019)
  • Chuxi Nan (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2019-2020)
  • Kaining Zhao (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2019-2020)
  • Hisham Mamode (MSc in Data Science, Technology and Innovation, 2019 - 2021)
  • Ruiying Yang (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2020-2021)
  • Shivamm Gupta (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2021-2022)
  • Xiaoyu Ren (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2021-2022)
  • Yuang Liu (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2022-2023)
  • Yanbing Luo (MSc in HPC with Data Science, 2022-2023)

Research summary

My current research interests are in community engagement and development, software sustainability and the research software ecosystem. I work with research communities across the UK and globally to promote and enable the improvement of important research software through consultative advice; collaborative partnerships; and long-term engagement.

Current project grants

Connecting Hub for Advancing the RTP Talent Enabling DRI (CHARTED) (Co-I) – £1.4m for institution (£1.7m total) – April 2025 – March 2028
DRI-focussed training for research facilitators and teams (DRIFT) (PI) - £154k for institution (£482k total) – January 2025 – March 2027
Understanding weather and climate dynamics using high-resolution global cloud resolving models (PI) – NERC - £75k – April 2025 – March 2027
The Software Sustainability Institute – Phase 4 (PI) – UKRI - £9.2m for institution (£13.0m total) – June 2024 – March 2028
EVERSE: European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence (10121158, Co-I) – Horizon Europe / InnovateUK - £392k for institution (€6.8m total) – March 2024 – February 2027

Past project grants

The UK Software Sustainability Institute: Phase 3 (EP/S021779/1, PI) – EPSRC (lead), AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC – £6.6m – Dec 2018 – Nov 2023
Understanding and Nurturing an Integrated Vision for Education in RSE and HPC (EP/W035731/1, PI) - SPF ExCALIBUR UKRI - £507k - Apr 2022 - Mar 2025
Cloud-SPAN: Specialised analyses for environmental 'omics with Cloud-based High Performance Computing (MR/V038680/1, Co-I) – UKRI - £500k – April 2021 – March 2023
Data driven life science skills development - equipping society for the future (MR/V039075/1, Named Researcher – Chair of Steering Committee) – UKRI - £344k – February 2021 – February 2023
CompBioMed2: A Centre of Excellence in Computational Biomedicine (Co-I) – EC - £324k – Nov 2018 – Oct 2022
Software and Skills for Large-Scale Computing: collecting evidence to develop a National Research Software Strategy (EP/W032155/1, PI) - UKRI - £136k - Dec 2021 - Mar 2022
Data Skills Workforce Development - Data Carpentry Workshops (Co-I) - SFC Upskilling Fund - £50k - Aug 2019 - Jul 2020
Research Data Shared Service: Software Deposit and Preservation Guidance (PI) – Jisc - £30k – Aug 2017 – Jul 2018
The Software Sustainability Institute: Phase 2 (EP/N006410/1, PI) – EPSRC (lead), BBSRC, ESRC - £4.4m – Jun 2015 – May 2019
Microsoft Azure Research Award (PI) – Microsoft - $20k – Mar 2015 – Mar 2016
SI2-CHE: Development and Deployment of Chemical Software for Advanced Potential Energy Surfaces (EP/K040138/1, Co-I) – EPSRC - £361k – Apr 2013 – Apr 2016
Software Hub (Co-I) – Jisc - £70k – Oct 2012 – Mar 2014
AWS in Education grant award (PI) – Amazon - $10k – Mar 2012 – Mar 2014
Rapport: Robust Application Porting for HPC in the Cloud (EP/I034246/1, Co-I) – EPSRC - £87k – Feb 2011 – Oct 2011
SSI: UK Software Sustainability Institute (EP/H043160/1, PI) – EPSRC - £5.5m – Jun 2010 – May 2016
OGSA-DAI: an OMII-UK Node – Services and Middleware for e-Science (EP/D043956/1, Researcher Co-I) – EPSRC - £1.9m – Nov 2005 – Mar 2010
DIALOGUE - Data Integration Applications: Linking Organisations to Gain Understanding & Experience (EP/C531248/1, Researcher Co-I) – EPSRC - £39k – Apr 2005 – Apr 2007

This article was published on