By Raniere Silva, Community Software Sustainability Institute.

Join us in welcoming the 17 new Software Sustainability Institute Fellows for 2019 and the first cohort as part of the third phase of the Institute. We are incredibly happy we received around 80 applications this year, almost doubling numbers from last edition! Because of that, selecting our new research software ambassadors was harder than ever.

The 2019 Fellows are: Andrew Stewart, Anna Krystalli, Benjamin Krikler, Catherine Smith, Daniel Hobley, Frances Cooper, Gergana Daskalova, Isla Myers-Smith, Jessica Ward, Laura James, Leandro Liborio, Lucy Whalley, Malvika Sharan, Mozhgan Kabiri Chimeh, Patricia Herterich, Rachael Ainsworth, and Sorrel Harriet. Congratulations to all of them!

The new cohort includes representatives from five fields in the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) code, including Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Computer Sciences, Mass Communication & Documentation and Historical and Philosophical Studies. Their work is supported from NERC, EPSRC, STFC, ESRC, AHRC, ELIXIR and Jisc (order based on the number of Fellows funded by each funding body).

The 2019 Fellows come from 13 research institutions in the UK, including the European Molecular Biology Laboratory for the first time. The map below shows the geographic distribution of the fellows. The University of Birmingham, University of Edinburgh, University of Manchester and University of Sheffield are the home of two fellows each and the institutions with more Fellows in the new cohort.

More than half of the Fellows are early career stage—they are Research Assistant/Associate, first grant holder, Lecturer and Research Software Engineer. The chart below provides more information about the distribution of applicants and Fellows based on  their career stage.

Still talking about demographics, we received three male applications for each female one, rate similar to previous years, but, for the first time ever, we have more female Fellows than male in the 2019 cohort. We believe that our friends and collaborators encouraged their female champions to apply, and this influenced the outcome illustrated on the chart below. This also indicates that we are doing a good job in facilitating and welcoming a friendly and diverse environment in the activities that we organise, e.g. Collaborations Workshop.

Some of the Fellows attended Collaborations Workshop 2019 and we hope you had the opportunity to met them in person. If it didn't happen and you'd like to meet them in person, Fellows 2019 will be attending Collaborations Workshop 2020 (sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know about the dates and other updates about the Institute).

And don't forget to take a look at our Fellows’ profiles. Many of them have provided their Twitter handles and other details so you can follow their work and contact them if you share a common interest.