Blog

• Trusted by design (part 3): embrace radically open communication by Niko Sirmpilatze, February 11, 2026

  Open-source software is public, yet much of the communication around it may happen in private emails, internal Slack channels and meetings with no minutes. This disconnect can erode the very trust that openness is meant to build. What if communication were radically open—a habit of constant, multi-way interactions visible to anyone who cares to look?

• Trusted by design (part 2): release early, release often by Niko Sirmpilatze, February 04, 2026

  ‘Release early, release often’ is an often-repeated mantra, popularised by Eric S. Raymond in his 1997 essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. I hadn’t fully grasped its significance until I switched from academic research to full-time software development. How early? How often? And why is this so critical to establishing and maintaining trust?

• Trusted by design (part 1): define your software’s mission and scope by Niko Sirmpilatze, January 28, 2026

  No project exists in a vacuum. Open-source software is a vast web of inter-connected and inter-dependent tools. When creating a new tool, your number one job is to carve out its place in the web consciously, openly and from the outset. How can you approach that?

• Trusted by design (intro): set up your research software for community adoption by Niko Sirmpilatze, January 28, 2026

  So, you want to create an open-source research software package—and not just for yourself or your group. You’d like people around the world to use it, and even contribute to it. How do you persuade them it’s worth their time?

• Exploring automatic ways of extracting a pose estimation skeleton for C. elegans by Pille Wetterauer, Jyoti Bhogal, December 03, 2025

  Segmenting C. elegans using SAM-2 and extracting skeletons.

  

• GSoC 2025: brainglobe-registration by Saarah Hussain, September 15, 2025

  Hi, I’m Saarah. The intersection of healthcare and software development has always been important to me, which is why spending my summer with the Neuroinformatics Unit has been the perfect opportunity to bring together the work I love.

• Add Google Drive and AWS to datashuttle - Final GSoC Report by Shrey Singh, September 12, 2025

  Hi, I am Shrey. This summer, I had the opportunity to contribute to open-source neuroscience software through Google Summer of Code — a program that connects student developers with mentoring organizations to work on real-world projects. I worked with the Neuroinformatics Unit to enhance datashuttle, a tool for the creation, validation and transfer of neuroscience project folders.

  

• A Personal Perspective on the Open Software Week by Marco Dalla Vecchia, September 12, 2025

  In this guest blog post, Marco Dalla Vecchia, image analyst at Imaging & Optics Facility of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) shares his experience of the first Open Software Week.

  

• derotation: a Python package for correcting motion artifacts in rotating multiphoton movies by Laura Porta, July 01, 2025

  Passive or active rotation of the head (yaw) is an ethologically relevant movement for rodents, enabling them to orient their bodies, avoid obstacles, and locate food sources. In neuroscience, controlled head rotation is a key experimental paradigm for studying the vestibular system and its influence on sensory processing. Electrophysiological recordings have demonstrated the impact of such movements on neural activity in the visual cortex, as shown by Velez et al. (2018).

  

• We are participating in Google Summer of Code 2025! by Sofía Miñano, February 28, 2025

  Join us over the summer and contribute to open-source neuroscience tools