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How We Work

CROSS follows the design of NSF's well-known Industry–University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRCs) but adds an incubator that funds graduated Ph.D. students to continue working on their research prototype as postdoctorial incubator fellows. The focus of the incubator fellow is to build a robust developer community.

CROSS Incubator and its requirements, current incubator fellows, evaluation metric, expected runtime, and community seeding

 

The Open Source Research Experience -- now managed through the UCSC Open Source Program Office -- was created as part of the CROSS Education program that also includes Workshops such as the Prof. Dirk Riehle's Commercial Open Source Workshop Series, an undergraduate course on Open Source Programming (CSE 117), and a CROSS Guest Speaker Series.

Creating a market for open source project ideas - matching mentors, students, and funders

In addition to incubator fellows, CROSS has also funded research fellows. These are Graduate Student Research (GSR) appointments for students who are working on highly innovative Ph.D. projects that are of interest to CROSS and its industry membership and have plausible paths to a successful open source software projects. Note however, that CROSS does not require research fellows to produce or maintain software. They are the carriers of innovation at CROSS and are evaluated by the strength of their research and their alignment with topics CROSS prefers to fund. Innovations coming out of research projects either directly flow into existing incubator projects (via the Research Experience Program) or can transition into incubator projects themselves.

CROSS Research fellows, requirements, current fellows, and graduated fellows.

Both incubator and research fellows are reviewed twice a year as part of the biannual Industry Advisory Board (IAB) meeting. CROSS also releases a call for proposals focussing on a list of topics suggested by the IAB. Members of industry make funding recommendations and the Director of CROSS makes the final decision in consultation with the CROSS Advisory Committee.

Call for research incubator proposals twice a year, review of projects twice a year

Previously, CROSS organized the Annual CROSS Research Symposium, a multi-day event to show off student work and research programs at CROSS and UC Santa Cruz. This event has been superceded by the UC Open Source Symposium. The program for these events contains plenary sessions with keynotes and lightening talks and workshop sessions centered around topics that CROSS fellows are working on or that are of strategic interest to CROSS.

CROSS Symposium: Annual multi-day event and "Systems Oktoberfest", next event: Oct 6-9, 2020 (this year: online, virtual Oktoberfest); centers technical program around current CROSS research and incubator projects; shows off studdent work and research programs; establishes interested communities of students, industry, government, and faculty; located at Baskin School of Engineering on UC Santa Cruz campus; cross.ucsc.edu/symposium

A prestigious Practitioner-in-Residence Program invites and funds well-known leaders of open source projects and other areas relevant to CROSS to visit UC Santa Cruz for an extended amount of time during which they teach especially themed versions of existing courses and mentor CROSS students. Like an Artist in Residence, the practitioner will continue to work on personal projects as well as contribute to the academic environment with a mix of teaching duties, offering feedback and critique, collaborating on research opportunities, and providing guidance.

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