The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) Fellowship Programme offers dedicated support for individuals who champion better research software practices across disciplines. The scheme provides funding, mentorship, and networking opportunities to help Fellows carry out ambitious initiatives that promote sustainable, reproducible, and high-quality software in research.
Dr Kevin Rue-Albrecht, computational biologist and data science trainer in the MRC WIMM Centre for Computational Biology, is one of 25 Fellows selected for SSI’s 2026 Fellowship Programme.
Dr Rue-Albrecht’s work sits at the intersection of collaborative biomedical research, open-source software development, and community training. Kevin is also an active member of the Bioconductor community, a project that develops and maintains thousands of open-source tools used worldwide to analyse modern biological data.
As research becomes increasingly reliant on interoperable software, communities like Bioconductor each maintain their own systems for labelling and categorising tools. The differences between these systems can make it harder for users to find the right resources and combine them into effective workflows. To address this challenge, a European intergovernmental organisation called ELIXIR created EDAM - a shared vocabulary designed to harmonise how bioinformatics tools and training materials are described across communities.
With the SSI Fellowship, Kevin will work with the Bioconductor and ELIXIR communities to test ways of linking terms between Bioconductor’s vocabulary and the EDAM system. He will collaborate with experts from both groups to produce clear, practical guidance and short tutorials to help developers label their work consistently and make it FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). He will present this work at workshops across Europe to test and refine the approach with community feedback.
Speaking about the Fellowship, Kevin said:
With tens of millions of downloads each year, Bioconductor tools are used by researchers around the world, yet many remain difficult to locate in major online catalogues. Through this Fellowship, I aim to change that by improving how Bioconductor’s software and training materials appear in the places that scientists search. This will make it easier for users to discover the right tools, build reliable workflows, and share their results.
Learn more about the 2026 Fellows on SSI’s website: Introducing the 2026 Fellowship Cohort: Insights and Celebrations