FOSS tools for scientific computing

As scientists and engineers, we use computers for many of our day to day tasks. However, many of the software tools that we use are expensive, and not easy to obtain and reuse. There are a plethora of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools that often do as good or a better job and are philosophically more aligned to the goals of scientific endeavors. I will highlight some of the FOSS tools for science and engineering and why they are useful. I will then delve into a set of tools that I have used for my own personal research and demonstrate why these are of value and importance. Specifically, I will demonstrate libraries and tools that are based on the Python programming language. I will show how the language is easy to read and yet enables numerical and symbolic computing, interactive exploration, high-performance computing and can be used to build graphical and web-based user interfaces. I will conclude with an outline of some MHRD sponsored initiatives, based at IIT Bombay, which aim to increase the adoption of FOSS tools in the curriculum. 


About Prof. Prabhu Ramachandran

Prabhu Ramachandran has been a faculty member at the department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay since 2005. He has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Madras. His research interests are primarily in particle methods and applied scientific computing. He has been active in the FOSS community for more than a decade. He co-founded the Indian Linux User Group - Chennai (ILUGC) in 1998, and is the creator and lead developer of the (FOSS-India-award-winning) Mayavi and TVTK Python packages (http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi). Prabhu has contributed to the Python wrappers of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK -- http://www.vtk.org). He is an active member of the SciPy community and a member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF). Prabhu currently heads the FOSSEE project (Free Open-source Software for Science and Engineering Education, http://fossee.in) which aims to spread the use of Python (and other Free Software) in the curriculum.