HSF Coordination Meeting #308, 4 June 2026
Attending
Present/Contributing: Claire Antel, Eduardo Rodrigues, Steven Gardiner, Stephen Mrenna, Saptaparna Battacharya, Christian Wessel
Apologies/Contributing: Alexander Moreno, Maarten van Veghel, Graeme Stewart
News, general matters, announcements
LHCC this week
Eduardo replaced Stefan and presented on HSF/community activities. Updates very well received and the LHCC makes the following statements:
- It welcomes the realignment and simplification of the affiliated projects programme, and congratulates on the increase in number of affiliated projects.
- Encourages the HSF to continue the open discussion around AI and AI-assisted technologies and to develop a policy framework for their application within HEP software. Additionally, it recommends that the HSF assumes a leading role in the coordination of training initiatives focused on these new technologies.
- Commends the HSF initiatives on training and dissemination of open data and FAIR practices in scientific analysis, and is pleased to see participation from multiple experiments. To realize full potential, it recommends that the HSF works closely with the CERN EOSC Node team to incorporate these initiatives into the Node’s programme of work and further develop them through a coordinated effort.
Details will be shared with the SG and the AA conveners soon, for future planning/actions.
Steering Group & Advisory Group
- Co-organising the next WLCG/HSF Workshop, 2-6 November 2026 in Bologna: Converged on draft schedule of HSF parallel sessions.
- Anticipate a call for contributions!
- We will be looking for conveners for the HSF parallel sessions. Please get in touch (very soon) with the SG if you’re interested.
- Next organisation meeting on June 8th.
HSF Affiliated Projects and Software
Status at https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/projects/projects.html - 6 projects affiliated.
Reviews in progress, being finalised:
- NoPayloadDB Conditions Database
Project proposals:
- Proposal to invite Phoenix project to become affiliate. Main author is happy about the idea :). A call will be made for 2 reviewers - get in contact if already interested!
Do not hesitate to discuss around you to identify relevant projects/libraries that could engage with the affiliation programme. AA conveners are in an excellent position to help us identify which projects to prioritise to join the affiliation programme.
AI in contributions to HSF repositories
Feedback still welcome: So far HSF repositories do not provide any statement on AI-powered/-helped contributions, and we are starting to get some. On occasions we can be flooded by not-too-useful contributions.
This year an “AI statement” is strongly suggested in GSoC proposals. We should do something similar. Suggestion is to update the website how-to with a statement on AI for contributions to the repo and how we will be dealing with “spam”.
There is an ongoing discussion at https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/issues/1919 with a lot of useful and concrete suggestions already.
In fact, the LHCC recommends that we try and do more, see in News from Steering Group above. To be discussed further.
HSF Seminar Series and Compute Accelerator Forum
Planned HSF seminars:
- 24th June: Seminar on Software Packaging - organised by Software Tools & Packaging AA.
- Multiple speakers - exact details being arranged now.
- 30th Sept: Seminar on “assessing sustainability of AI” by Sophia Wilson (SAINTS Lab, University of Copenhagen).
Invited but to be confirmed for HSF seminars:
- On “Green Software Engineering” by Michael Sparks, Manchester.
- Inspired by SC4RC conference presentation.
Activities Updates
GSoC 2026
Programme running with 26 projects approved.
Software Training
Past Events
- HSF/GSoC Training Orientation - May 25
- ~20 contributors attended online
- Suggestions from participants:
- Use a communication platform such as Slack or Mattermost
- Hold an event at the end of the program where they can present their work
- CHEP 2026, May 24-29
- Talk HEP Software Training with IRIS-HEP/HSF (May 28) given by Richa
- Open Science Practitioners Forum (OSPF) - Open Science Office (OSO)
- Talk training initiatives and activities. Wednesday, June 3, 15:00 CERN time. https://indico.cern.ch/event/1684734/
Next Events
- HSF/IRIS-HEP Software Basics Training at Labs (start of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships)
- Next HEP C++ course 12-16 October (advanced edition), https://indico.cern.ch/event/1689553/ , registration to open before summer
Physics Generators
- Pursue idea of “sustainability reports” by generator groups. Pythia would volunteer to give the first such report.
PyHEP
Reminder:
- PyHEP.dev 2026 will be held at Nikhef Amsterdam, September 7-9.
JuliaHEP
Reminder:
- JuliaHEP 2026 will be held at MPI Munich, October 19-23. Abstract submissions are already open.
- JuliaCon 2026 - JuliaHEP Mini-Symposium - Julia for Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics: From Precision Science to High-Performance Tools. Scheduled for the Wednesday Morning (Aug 12).
Software Developer Tools and Packaging
See seminar above.
AOB
HSF Promotional Poster
- Sapta has a poster to promote the HSF. There is one version here, but please contact her for the latest version.
- Claire will make a modified version highlighting the HSF seminars.
Defunct Repositories
Eduardo noticed a few anachronistic repositories in the HSF GitHub:
- https://github.com/HSF/docker - was intended for homebrew docker containers (for a time hosted the container used for website validation).
- No longer needed, proposal is to delete.
- https://github.com/HSF/tools - hosted an HSF C++ project template and a few utility scripts, not actively maintained (there are better maintained alternatives).
- No longer needed, proposal is to archive.
Proposed actions done.
Physical Constants / HEPdata Library
There is now an early “proof of concept” version: hep-constants. Some generally positive feedback was received, but no further development yet.
Next Meeting
The next coordination meeting will be on June 18th.