A week of collaboration, coding, and community

The 14th SasView Contributor Camp brought together students, postdocs, established researchers, and software engineers in Garching for a week-long hackathon designed to advance SasView, the open-source software for analysing small-angle scattering data.

Around twenty international researchers, students, postdocs, and software developers joined forces to advance SasView in the 14th edition of the Contributor Camp in Garching. © Reiner Müller, FRM II/TUM

Around twenty international researchers, students, postdocs, and software developers joined forces to advance SasView in the 14th edition of the Contributor Camp in Garching. © Reiner Müller, FRM II/TUM

Small-angle scattering (SAS) of X-rays or neutrons enables researchers to examine the nanostructure of materials in great detail, ranging from batteries to proteins, soft matter, and magnetic materials. However, analysing the output of these measurements can be complex and time-consuming, which is where SasView comes into play: “SasView is like the swiss-army knife in the analysis of SAS data: It provides a collaboratively developed, community-driven solution that makes this essential step in the scientific process faster, more reliable, and accessible to everyone working with scattering data”, says local co-host Dr. Sebastian Mühlbauer, instrument scientist at the SANS-1 instrument at the FRM II.

A collaborative push toward SasView 7.0
Co-sponsored by the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) and the European Spallation Source (ESS) and organised by Dr. Paul Butler (University of Delaware & University of Tennessee) and Dr. Annika Stellhorn (ESS) from the SasView developer team, the camp opened with two days of hands-on training – from GitHub workflows to GUI development, code architecture, and testing – giving newcomers the foundation they needed to actively contribute. Following the training sessions, participants engaged in intensive design discussions and development sprints.

Co-host Dr. Neelima Paul, who leads the data evaluation group at FRM II, draws a positive conclusion: “Together, we managed to improve the documentation, enhance existing features, and make substantial progress on major refactoring and new capabilities for the upcoming SasView release.” SasView 7.0 will introduce a fully redesigned data and plotting infrastructure.

Focus on magnetic SANS analysis
A highlight was a deep dive into the critical needs of magnetic Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) data analysis, a topic ideally suited to Garching’s location near the FRM II and leading research groups. Based on community input, the agenda included work on: better anisotropic data treatment, enhanced 1D fitting, upgrades to slicers and data math tools, improved plotting, streamlined polarized beam measurements, and robust Qz handling for three-dimensional analysis.