Open Science Index · open-source scientific software

Open-source scientific software for researchers

A curated, filterable directory across genomics, structural biology, chemistry, microscopy, neuroscience, medical imaging, astronomy, climate, and physics. Pick a domain, or search by name.

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Medical Imagingactive

3D Slicer

Extensible platform for medical image visualization, segmentation, and IGT.

DICOMNIfTI
C++Slicer
Medical Imagingactive

AFNI

Analysis of Functional NeuroImages — interactive FMRI processing.

NIfTIBRIK
CNIMH
AI for Scienceactive

AI2 ScholarQA

Long-form scientific question answering grounded in the research literature.

MultiAllen Institute
Bioimagingactive

Aivia

AI-powered commercial microscopy image analysis and visualization.

TIFF
MultiLeica
Astronomyactive

Aladin

Sky atlas for visualizing images and catalogues over the whole sky.

FITSVOTable
JavaCDS
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Alevin-fry

Fast, memory-frugal single-cell and single-nucleus quantification.

FASTQ
RustCOMBINE-lab
Scientific Databasesactive

Allen Brain Atlas

Gene expression, connectivity, and cell-type atlases of mouse and human brain.

MultiAllen Institute
Atlases & Anatomyactive

AllenSDK

Access to Allen Institute datasets and reference atlases — mouse brain atlas, cell types, connectivity.

NWB
PythonAllen Institute
Genomics & Single-cellactive

AlphaFold

Deep-learning protein-structure prediction that reshaped structural biology.

PythonGoogle DeepMind
Scientific Databasesactive

AlphaFold DB

Predicted protein structures for hundreds of millions of sequences.

PDB
MultiEMBL-EBI / DeepMind
Proteomicsactive

AlphaPept

Modular Python framework for fast shotgun proteomics.

mzML
PythonMann Lab
Data Standardsactive

Alyx

Web-based electronic lab notebook and colony/experiment database for multi-lab collaborations.

Pythoncortex-lab / IBL
Structural Biologyactive

AMBER

Molecular mechanics and MD suite with the Amber force fields.

PDB
FortranAMBER
Pose & Behavioractive

anipose

Robust 3D pose via multi-camera triangulation, sitting downstream of DeepLabCut.

DeepLabCut
PythonTuthill Lab
Atlases & Anatomyactive

ANTs

Advanced Normalization Tools — high-quality image registration and segmentation for MRI/brain pipelines.

C++ANTsX
Workflows & Repro.active

Apptainer

Container platform built for HPC (formerly Singularity) — reproducible, rootless environments on clusters.

GoLinux Foundation
Simulationactive

Arbor

Modern multi-compartment simulation library that maps morphological networks onto GPUs and multicore CPUs.

C++arbor-sim
Genomics & Single-cellactive

ArchR

Full analysis suite for single-cell ATAC-seq.

Arrow
RGreenleaf Lab
Astronomyactive

AREPO

Moving-mesh magnetohydrodynamics code for cosmological simulations.

CMPA / Harvard
Bioimagingactive

Arivis Vision4D

Commercial 3D/4D visualization and analysis for large microscopy volumes.

TIFF
MultiZEISS
Astronomyactive

Astropy

Core Python library for astronomy: coordinates, FITS, units, tables, cosmology.

FITS
PythonAstropy
Astronomyactive

astroquery

Query astronomical databases and archives from Python.

PythonAstropy
Structural Biologyactive

AutoDock Vina

Widely used open-source molecular docking and virtual screening engine.

PDBPDBQT
C++Center for Computational Structural Biology
Chemistryactive

Avogadro

Free molecular editor and visualizer for building inputs and inspecting geometries.

XYZPDB
C++Avogadro
Pose & Behavioractive

B-SOiD

Unsupervised discovery of behavioral clusters from pose data, then a fast frame-wise classifier.

DeepLabCut
PythonYttri Lab
Spatial Biologyactive

BayesSpace

Bayesian clustering and enhancement for spatial transcriptomics.

Visium
RZhao Lab
Genomics & Single-cellactive

BBKNN

Batch-balanced kNN graphs for integrating single-cell datasets in Scanpy.

h5ad
PythonTeichmann Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

bcftools

Variant calling and VCF/BCF manipulation sitting next to samtools.

VCFBCF
CSamtools
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

bedtools

Swiss-army knife for genomic interval arithmetic on BED, GFF, VCF and BAM.

BEDBAMVCF
C++Quinlan Lab
Lab Managementactive

Benchling

Cloud R&D platform: ELN, molecular biology, and sample tracking.

MultiBenchling
Data Standardsactive

BIDS

Community standard for organizing neuroimaging and ephys datasets in a machine-readable layout.

BIDS
MultiBIDS Maintainers
Bioimagingactive

BigStitcher

Fiji plugin for aligning and fusing terabyte-scale multi-view light-sheet data.

HDF5
JavaMPI-CBG
Lab Managementactive

Bika LIMS

Open-source laboratory information management system on Plone.

PythonBika
Bioimagingactive

Bio-Formats

Reads and writes hundreds of proprietary microscopy formats into a common model.

JavaOME
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Bioconductor

Open project for R packages in genomics, flow cytometry, and computational biology.

RBioconductor
Workflows & Repro.active

BioContainers

Container registry of bioinformatics tools for reproducible pipelines.

Docker
MultiBioContainers
Scientific Databasesactive

BioGRID

Curated genetic and protein interaction data.

MultiBioGRID
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Biopython

Tools for computational molecular biology: sequence parsing, alignment, structure and database access.

PythonBiopython
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

BLAST

The standard local sequence similarity search against nucleotide and protein DBs.

FASTA
C++NCBI
Simulationactive

BluePyOpt

Data-driven optimization of neuron model parameters using evolutionary algorithms.

PythonBlue Brain
Structural Biologyactive

Boltz

Open biomolecular structure prediction for proteins, ligands, and complexes.

FASTAPDB
PythonMIT Jameel Clinic
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

Bowtie2

Fast, memory-efficient short-read aligner for DNA sequencing.

FASTQSAM
C++Langmead Lab
Atlases & Anatomyactive

BrainGlobe Atlas API

One programmatic interface to many reference atlases across species — the backbone of BrainGlobe.

PythonBrainGlobe
Atlases & Anatomyactive

brainreg

Automated 3D whole-brain registration to a reference atlas, with an optional napari plugin.

napari
PythonBrainGlobe
Visualizationactive

brainrender

3D rendering of anatomically registered neuroanatomical data, driven by the BrainGlobe Atlas API.

PythonBrainGlobe
Electrophysiologyactive

Brainstorm

GUI-first application for MEG/EEG/iEEG analysis and source imaging.

MATLABUSC / McGill
Simulationactive

Brian2

Equation-oriented simulator for spiking networks — define models in plain math and run them fast.

PythonBrian team
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

BWA

Burrows–Wheeler aligner for mapping DNA sequences against a large reference.

FASTQBAM
CHeng Li
Calcium Imagingactive

CaImAn

End-to-end calcium imaging: motion correction, source extraction, deconvolution and cross-session registration.

NWB
PythonFlatiron Institute
Engineering & CFDactive

CalculiX

Open 3D structural finite-element solver with Abaqus-like input.

FortranCalculiX
Metabolomicsactive

CAMERA

Annotation of isotopes, adducts, and fragments on XCMS peak lists.

mzML
RBioconductor
Bioimagingactive

CARE

Content-aware image restoration for denoising and isotropic reconstruction.

TIFF
PythonCSBDeep
Astronomyactive

CARTA

Cube Analysis and Rendering Tool for Astronomy — large radio cubes.

FITSHDF5
C++CARTA
Earth & Climateactive

Cartopy

Cartographic projections and geospatial plotting for Matplotlib.

GeoTIFF
PythonSciTools
Astronomyactive

CASA

Common Astronomy Software Applications for radio interferometry.

MS
C++NRAO
Chemistryactive

CDK

Java library for cheminformatics, rendering, and QSAR descriptors.

SMILESSDF
JavaChemistry Development Kit
Earth & Climateactive

CDO

Climate Data Operators — command-line processing of GRIB and NetCDF.

NetCDFGRIB
C++MPI-M
Neural Modelingactive

CEBRA

Contrastive learning of consistent low-dimensional embeddings from joint neural and behavioral time series.

DeepLabCut
PythonMathis Lab
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Cell Ranger

Official 10x pipeline from FASTQ to count matrices for Chromium assays.

FASTQ
Multi10x Genomics
Spatial Biologyactive

cell2location

Bayesian mapping of cell types onto spatial transcriptomics spots.

h5ad
PythonTeichmann Lab
Genomics & Single-cellactive

CellChat

Inference of cell–cell communication from single-cell expression.

RDS
RJin Lab
Atlases & Anatomyactive

cellfinder

Detects and atlas-maps cells across whole-brain microscopy volumes with detection plus a deep classifier.

napari
PythonBrainGlobe
Genomics & Single-cellactive

CellPhoneDB

Ligand–receptor database and inference of cell–cell communication.

h5ad
PythonTeichmann Lab
Connectomics & Seg.active

Cellpose

Generalist deep-learning cell segmentation with a human-in-the-loop GUI. Works in 2D and 3D.

PythonMouseLand
Bioimagingactive

CellProfiler

Modular, repeatable pipelines for segmentation and high-content feature extraction, runnable headless.

PythonBroad Institute
Earth & Climateactive

CESM

Community Earth System Model — coupled atmosphere, ocean, land, ice.

NetCDF
FortranNCAR
Structural Biologyactive

CHARMM

Chemistry at HARvard Macromolecular Mechanics — simulation and force fields.

PDB
FortranCHARMM
Scientific Databasesactive

ChEBI

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest — ontology of small molecules.

MultiEMBL-EBI
Chemistryactive

ChemAxon

Commercial cheminformatics platform for drawing, naming, and chemical search.

SMILES
JavaChemAxon
AI for Scienceactive

ChemBERTa

Transformer language models pretrained on SMILES for molecular property prediction.

SMILES
PythonDeepChem
Scientific Databasesactive

ChEMBL

Bioactive molecules with drug-like properties and bioactivity data.

SMILES
MultiEMBL-EBI
AI for Scienceactive

Chemprop

Message-passing neural networks for molecular property prediction.

SMILES
PythonMIT
Scientific Databasesactive

ChemSpider

Royal Society of Chemistry structure search across hundreds of sources.

SMILES
MultiRSC
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Cicero

Predicts cis-regulatory DNA interactions from single-cell chromatin.

RDS
RTrapnell / Shendure
Connectomics & Seg.active

CloudVolume

Serverless client for reading and writing Neuroglancer Precomputed volumes, meshes and skeletons at petascale.

PythonSeung Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

Clustal Omega

Scalable multiple sequence alignment for large protein families.

FASTA
CEMBL-EBI
Engineering & CFDactive

Code_Aster

EDF's open structural mechanics and thermomechanics FEM code.

PythonEDF
Engineering & CFDactive

Code_Saturne

EDF's general-purpose CFD software for incompressible and low-Mach flow.

CEDF
Structural Biologyactive

ColabFold

Accessible AlphaFold2 / AF2-multimer predictions via MMseqs2 MSAs.

FASTAPDB
PythonSteinegger Lab
Proteomicsactive

Comet

Open tandem mass spectrometry sequence database search tool.

mzML
C++UW Proteome Resource
Physicsactive

COMSOL

Commercial multiphysics finite-element simulation platform.

MultiCOMSOL
AI for Scienceactive

Consensus

Search engine that answers research questions with findings from papers.

MultiConsensus
Chemistryactive

CP2K

Atomistic and molecular simulations with DFT and mixed Gaussian/plane-wave methods.

XYZ
FortranCP2K
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

Cufflinks

Classic transcript assembly and differential expression from RNA-seq.

BAMGTF
C++Trapnell Lab
Workflows & Repro.active

CWL

Common Workflow Language — portable descriptions of data analysis workflows.

CWL
MultiCommon Workflow Language
Structural Biologyactive

DALI

Distance-matrix protein structure comparison, a classic of fold matching.

PDB
CHolm Lab
Data Standardsactive

DANDI

CLI and archive for publishing, versioning and sharing NWB and BIDS datasets on the DANDI cloud.

NWBBIDS
PythonBRAIN Initiative
Pose & Behavioractive

DANNCE

Direct 3D pose estimation for freely moving rodents from synchronized multi-camera video.

PythonDunn / Olveczky
Scientific Computingactive

Dask

Parallel computing that scales NumPy, pandas and scikit-learn from a laptop to a cluster.

PythonDask
Data Standardsactive

DataJoint

Relational data-pipeline framework that automates neuroscience data collection and computation.

PythonDataJoint
Workflows & Repro.active

DataLad

Distributed data version control on Git and git-annex, tracking large files and full provenance.

BIDS
PythonDataLad team
Medical Imagingactive

dcm4che

Open-source DICOM toolkit and archive used in PACS integrations.

DICOM
Javadcm4che
Medical Imagingactive

DCMTK

OFFIS DICOM toolkit — convert, send, and inspect DICOM objects.

DICOM
C++OFFIS
Physicsactive

deal.II

C++ finite-element library for adaptive, high-order PDE solvers.

C++deal.II
Bioimagingactive

DeepCell

Deep learning for cell segmentation and tracking in live-cell imaging.

TIFF
PythonVan Valen Lab
Chemistryactive

DeepChem

Deep-learning toolkit for molecules, materials, and biology datasets.

SMILES
PythonDeepChem
Pose & Behavioractive

DeepEthogram

Supervised behavior classification straight from raw video pixels — no pose step — producing full ethograms.

PythonHarvey Lab
Bioimagingactive

DeepImageJ

Fiji/ImageJ plugin to run trained deep-learning models on microscopy images.

TIFF
JavaDeepImageJ
Pose & Behavioractive

DeepLabCut

Markerless 2D/3D pose estimation for any animal or human via transfer learning — the field's most-used tracker.

napari
PythonMathis Lab
Medical Imagingactive

DeepMedic

3D CNN for brain-lesion segmentation, originally for tumor MRI.

NIfTI
PythonBiomedIA
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

DESeq2

Differential gene expression from count data with shrinkage estimators.

counts
RBioconductor
Spatial Biologyactive

DestVI

Multi-resolution deconvolution of spatial transcriptomics with scvi-tools.

h5ad
PythonYosef Lab
AI for Scienceactive

DGL-LifeSci

Graph neural networks for molecules and proteins on DGL.

SMILES
PythonAWS
Proteomicsactive

DIA-NN

Neural-network engine for data-independent acquisition proteomics.

mzML
C++Demichev Lab
Structural Biologyactive

DiffDock

Diffusion-based molecular docking that samples ligand poses without a pocket prior.

PDBSDF
PythonMIT CSAIL
Medical Imagingactive

DIPY

Diffusion imaging in Python — reconstruction, tractography, and microstructural models.

NIfTI
PythonDIPY
Workflows & Repro.active

Dockstore

Registry of Docker-based tools and workflows (CWL, WDL, Nextflow).

CWLWDL
MultiOICR / GA4GH
Genomics & Single-cellactive

DoubletFinder

Doublet detection for scRNA-seq in Seurat workflows.

RDS
RMcGinnis
Scientific Databasesactive

DrugBank

Drug and drug-target database used throughout pharmacology.

MultiWishart Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

DrugCentral

Drug information resource covering active ingredients and indications.

MultiUNM
Workflows & Repro.active

DVC

Git for data and models — versioning, reproducible pipelines and experiment tracking.

PythonIterative
Neural Modelingactive

Dynamax

State-space models in JAX — the modern successor to ssm, with GPU-friendly inference.

PythonLinderman Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

EBRAINS

European research infrastructure for brain data, atlases, and simulation.

MultiEBRAINS
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

edgeR

Empirical Bayes RNA-seq differential expression for designed experiments.

counts
RBioconductor
Electrophysiologyactive

EEGLAB

The classic EEG analysis environment with ICA, time-frequency tools and a huge plugin ecosystem.

BIDS
MATLABSCCN / UCSD
Lab Managementactive

eLabFTW

Free open-source electronic lab notebook for research teams.

PHPDeltablot
Electrophysiologyactive

Elephant

Analysis toolkit for spike trains and signals: correlation, spectral and Granger analysis, SPADE, CSD.

Neo
PythonNeuralEnsemble
AI for Scienceactive

Elicit

AI research assistant that finds papers, extracts evidence, and synthesizes findings.

MultiOught
Physicsactive

Elmer

Open finite-element multiphysics simulation software.

FortranCSC
Proteomicsactive

EncyclopeDIA

Chromatogram-library DIA search and quantification.

mzML
JavaMacCoss Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

Ensembl

Genome browser and annotations for vertebrates and other eukaryotes.

MultiEMBL-EBI / Sanger
Earth & Climateactive

ESA PolSARpro

Polarimetric SAR data processing and educational toolbox.

GeoTIFF
CESA
AI for Scienceactive

ESM

Evolutionary Scale Modeling — protein language models for structure and function.

FASTA
PythonMeta FAIR
Structural Biologyactive

ESMFold

Single-sequence protein structure prediction from ESM language models.

FASTAPDB
PythonMeta FAIR
Earth & Climateactive

ESMValTool

Community diagnostics and performance metrics for Earth system models.

NetCDF
PythonESMValGroup
AI for Scienceactive

Evo

DNA foundation model at genome scale for sequence generation and prediction.

FASTA
PythonArc Institute
Astronomyactive

ExoTransmit

Radiative-transfer code for exoplanet transmission spectra.

PythonKempton
Calcium Imagingactive

EXTRACT

Robust automated cell extraction that suppresses contamination and crosstalk in calcium movies.

MATLABSchnitzer Lab
Pose & Behavioractive

facemap

Tracks mouse orofacial movements and predicts neural activity from behavior via SVD of face video.

PythonMouseLand
Physicsactive

FEniCS

Automated finite-element solver for PDEs with a Python/C++ interface.

PythonFEniCS
Physicsactive

FeynCalc

Mathematica package for symbolic semi-automatic high-energy calculations.

MultiFeynCalc
Electrophysiologyactive

FieldTrip

Comprehensive toolbox for advanced MEG, EEG and invasive electrophysiology analysis.

MATLABDonders Institute
Bioimagingactive

Fiji / ImageJ

The public-domain workhorse of scientific image processing, with a vast ecosystem of plugins.

JavaImageJ community
Physicsactive

FiPy

Finite-volume PDE solver written in Python.

PythonNIST
Medical Imagingactive

fMRIPrep

Robust, BIDS-app fMRI preprocessing that replaces lab-specific pipelines.

NIfTIBIDS
PythonNiPreps
Structural Biologyactive

Foldseek

Ultrafast protein structure search in 3Di space, including AlphaFold DB.

PDB
C++Steinegger Lab
Proteomicsactive

FragPipe

GUI workflow around MSFragger, Philosopher, and IonQuant.

mzML
JavaNesvizhskii Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

FreeBayes

Haplotype-based Bayesian variant detector for small variants from BAM.

BAMVCF
C++Erik Garrison
Engineering & CFDactive

FreeCAD

Open-source parametric 3D CAD/CAE modeler.

STEP
C++FreeCAD
Medical Imagingactive

FreeSurfer

Cortical reconstruction, parcellation, and morphometry from structural MRI.

NIfTIMGZ
C++MGH / Harvard
Medical Imagingactive

FreeView

FreeSurfer's 3D viewer for volumes, surfaces, and labels.

MGZ
C++MGH
Medical Imagingactive

FSL

FMRIB Software Library — MRI analysis from BET to FEAT and TBSS.

NIfTI
C++FMRIB Oxford
AI for Scienceactive

FutureHouse

AI-scientist platform (PaperQA, Crow, Falcon) for literature and experimental design.

MultiFutureHouse
Astronomyactive

GADGET

N-body / SPH code for cosmological structure formation.

CSpringel
Scientific Databasesactive

Gaia Archive

ESA Gaia catalogue of billion-star astrometry and photometry.

MultiESA
Workflows & Repro.active

Galaxy

Web platform that makes reproducible bioinformatics accessible without writing code.

PythonGalaxy Project
Chemistryactive

GAMESS

General Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System — open ab initio code.

XYZ
FortranIowa State
Astronomyactive

Gammapy

Python package for gamma-ray astronomy data analysis.

FITS
PythonGammapy
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

GATK

Genome Analysis Toolkit for variant discovery and genotyping at scale.

BAMVCF
JavaBroad Institute
Chemistryactive

Gaussian

Commercial quantum chemistry package for electronic structure and spectra.

XYZ
FortranGaussian, Inc.
Earth & Climateactive

GDAL

Translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats.

GeoTIFF
C++OSGeo
Physicsactive

Geant4

Monte Carlo toolkit for the passage of particles through matter.

C++CERN
Scientific Databasesactive

Gene Ontology

Structured vocabulary for gene product functions across organisms.

MultiGO Consortium
Earth & Climateactive

GeoPandas

Pandas for geospatial vector data with Shapely and Fiona.

GeoJSONShapefile
PythonGeoPandas
Spatial Biologyactive

Giotto

Comprehensive toolbox for spatial transcriptomics visualization and analysis.

h5ad
RGiotto Suite
Spatial Biologyactive

Giotto Suite

Modular successor to Giotto for multi-omic spatial data at tissue scale.

h5ad
RDries Lab
Engineering & CFDactive

Gmsh

Three-dimensional finite-element mesh generator with a CAD engine.

MSH
C++Gmsh
Structural Biologyactive

GNINA

Deep-learning scoring on top of AutoDock Vina for molecular docking.

PDBSDF
C++Ragoza / Koes
Metabolomicsactive

GNPS

Global Natural Products Social molecular networking for MS/MS.

mzML
MultiDorrestein Lab
AI for Scienceactive

Google AI Co-Scientist

Multi-agent system for hypothesis generation and research planning.

MultiGoogle DeepMind
Earth & Climateactive

Google Earth Engine

Planetary-scale Earth observation analysis in the cloud.

GeoTIFF
JavaScriptGoogle
Earth & Climateactive

GRASS GIS

Full GIS for raster, vector, and geospatial modeling, often under QGIS.

GeoTIFF
COSGeo
Structural Biologyactive

GROMACS

Workhorse molecular dynamics package for biomolecules and free-energy calculations.

GROTPR
C++GROMACS
Scientific Computingactive

h5py

Pythonic interface to HDF5 — the default on-disk container behind NWB.

NWB
Pythonh5py
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Harmony

Fast, sensitive integration of single-cell data across batches and modalities.

RDS
RRaychaudhuri Lab
Data Standardsactive

HDMF

Hierarchical Data Modeling Framework — the extensible modeling engine underneath PyNWB.

NWB
PythonNeurodataWithoutBorders
Astronomyactive

HEASoft

FTOOLS / XANADU suite for high-energy astrophysics data.

FITS
CNASA HEASARC
Spike Sortingactive

HerdingSpikes

Spike detection and sorting built for very large high-density MEAs, prioritizing scalability.

SpikeInterface
Pythonmhhennig
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

HISAT2

Graph-based, splice-aware aligner for RNA-seq against a genome plus known splices.

FASTQSAM
C++Kim Lab
Metabolomicsactive

HMDB

Human Metabolome Database — reference spectra, pathways, and concentrations.

MultiWishart Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

Human Connectome Project

Open multimodal MRI resource for human brain connectivity.

NIfTI
MultiWU-Minn / MGH
Bioimagingactive

Ilastik

Interactive machine-learning for image classification and segmentation — train a classifier by painting labels.

Pythonilastik team
Bioimagingactive

Imaris

Commercial 3D/4D microscopy visualization, tracing, and cell analysis.

IMS
MultiOxford Instruments
Scientific Databasesactive

IntAct

Open molecular-interaction database from the IMEx consortium.

MultiEMBL-EBI
Scientific Databasesactive

InterPro

Classification of protein families and domains from many signature DBs.

MultiEMBL-EBI
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

IQ-TREE

Efficient maximum-likelihood phylogenetic inference with model selection.

FASTA
C++IQ-TREE
Astronomyactive

IRAF

Classic Image Reduction and Analysis Facility, still used for optical pipelines.

FITS
CNOIRLab
Earth & Climateactive

Iris

Python library for analysing and visualising Earth-science cubes.

NetCDF
PythonMet Office
Medical Imagingactive

ITK

Insight Toolkit — the C++ foundation for medical image registration and segmentation.

NIfTI
C++Kitware
Chemistryactive

Jmol

Interactive 3D viewer for chemical structures in the browser and desktop.

PDBCIF
JavaJmol
Chemistryactive

JSmol

JavaScript port of Jmol for embedding molecular viewers on the web.

PDB
JavaScriptJmol
Scientific Computingactive

Jupyter

Interactive notebooks that weave code, results and narrative — the lab notebook of computation.

PythonNumFOCUS
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

Kallisto

Near-optimal RNA-seq quantification using pseudoalignment.

FASTQ
C++Pachter Lab
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Kallisto bustools

Pseudoalignment + BUS files for scRNA-seq quantification and QC.

FASTQ
C++Pachter Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

KEGG

Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes — pathways, genes, and compounds.

MultiKanehisa Labs
Pose & Behavioractive

Keypoint-MoSeq

Discovers behavioral syllables from keypoints with a generative model that separates behavior from tracking noise.

DeepLabCut
PythonDatta Lab
Spike Sortingactive

Kilosort

Fast spike sorting with drift correction for high-density probes like Neuropixels. KS4 uses graph clustering.

SpikeInterface
PythonMouseLand
Engineering & CFDactive

Kratos

Framework for building multidisciplinary finite-element programs.

C++CIMNE
Lab Managementactive

LabArchives

Commercial electronic lab notebook used across universities.

MultiLabArchives
Lab Managementactive

LabKey

Open platform for integrating, analyzing, and sharing lab data.

JavaLabKey
Physicsactive

LAMMPS

Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator.

C++Sandia
Genomics & Single-cellactive

LIANA

Ligand–receptor consensus framework wrapping many CCC methods.

h5ad
PythonSaez-Rodriguez Lab
Astronomyactive

Lightkurve

Kepler / TESS light-curve analysis for exoplanets and stellar variability.

FITS
PythonLightkurve
Pose & Behavioractive

Lightning Pose

Semi-supervised pose estimation with Bayesian ensembling — accurate from far fewer labeled frames.

PythonPaninski Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

limma

Linear models for microarray, RNA-seq, and methylation differential analysis.

counts
RBioconductor
Physicsactive

MadGraph5_aMC@NLO

Automated matrix-element generator for collider event simulation.

PythonMadGraph
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

MAFFT

Accurate multiple sequence alignment for nucleotides and proteins.

FASTA
CKatoh
Visualizationactive

Makie.jl

High-performance, interactive plotting for Julia.

JuliaMakie
Metabolomicsactive

MassBank

Community repository of tandem mass spectra for metabolite ID.

msp
MultiMassBank
Scientific Databasesactive

MAST

Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes — HST, JWST, TESS, and more.

FITS
MultiSTScI
Data Standardsactive

MatNWB

MATLAB API for NWB, generated from the schema so it stays in sync with the standard.

NWB
MATLABNeurodataWithoutBorders
Proteomicsactive

MaxQuant

Quantitative proteomics from shotgun MS, including Andromeda search and LFQ.

mzMLraw
C#Cox Lab
Visualizationactive

Mayavi

3D scientific data visualization and plotting in Python.

PythonEnthought
Spatial Biologyactive

MERINGUE

Spatial gene-expression statistics and neighborhood analysis.

counts
RFan Lab
Calcium Imagingactive

Mesmerize

Fast, memory-efficient batch management for CaImAn algorithms, designed to plug into napari.

Pythonmesmerize-org
Metabolomicsactive

MetaboAnalyst

Web and R toolbox for metabolomics statistical and functional analysis.

csv
RXia Lab
Metabolomicsactive

MetFrag

In-silico fragmenter that ranks candidate structures against MS/MS.

mzML
JavaMetFrag
Earth & Climateactive

MetPy

Meteorological calculations and plotting built on Matplotlib.

NetCDF
PythonUnidata
Bioimagingactive

Micro-Manager

Open microscope control software that drives hundreds of cameras and stages.

JavaOpen Imaging
Calcium Imagingactive

MIN1PIPE

A miniscope 1-photon signal-extraction pipeline that runs end-to-end with minimal manual work.

MATLABKim Lab
Calcium Imagingactive

MiniAn

Open analysis pipeline for one-photon miniscope imaging, built on xarray and Dask for out-of-core work.

PythonCai Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

minimap2

Versatile pairwise aligner for long reads, assemblies, and full genomes.

FASTQBAMPAF
CHeng Li
Bioimagingactive

MIST

Microscopy Image Stitching Tool for large tiled acquisitions.

TIFF
JavaNIST
Workflows & Repro.active

MLflow

Tracks experiments, packages models and manages the ML lifecycle from prototype to deployment.

PythonLinux Foundation
Structural Biologyactive

MMseqs2

Ultrafast protein sequence clustering and search, including structure-aware modes.

FASTA
C++Steinegger Lab
Electrophysiologyactive

MNE-Python

State-of-the-art MEG/EEG processing: preprocessing, source localization, connectivity, time-frequency.

BIDS
PythonMNE community
AI for Scienceactive

MolFormer

Transformer trained on SMILES for molecular representation learning.

SMILES
PythonIBM
Medical Imagingactive

MONAI

PyTorch-based AI framework for healthcare imaging.

NIfTI
PythonProject MONAI
Medical Imagingactive

MONAI Label

Active-learning server for AI-assisted annotation in 3D Slicer and others.

NIfTI
PythonProject MONAI
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Monocle3

Trajectory inference, clustering, and differential expression for large scRNA-seq.

RDS
RTrapnell Lab
Physicsactive

MOOSE

Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment for coupled PDEs.

C++INL
Spike Sortingactive

MountainSort5

Density-based spike sorter, rewritten for the SpikeInterface era with isosplit clustering.

SpikeInterface
PythonFlatiron Institute
Medical Imagingactive

MRIQC

Automated quality control metrics and reports for MRI.

NIfTIBIDS
PythonNiPreps
Medical Imagingactive

MRtrix3

Tools for diffusion MRI, constrained spherical deconvolution, and tractography.

NIfTIMIF
C++MRtrix
Metabolomicsactive

MS-DIAL

Untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics with spectral deconvolution.

mzML
C#RIKEN
Proteomicsactive

MSFragger

Ultrafast fragment-ion search engine for peptide identification.

mzML
JavaNesvizhskii Lab
Proteomicsactive

MSstats

Statistical relative quantification for targeted, DDA, and DIA proteomics.

csv
RVitek Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

MUSCLE

Fast multiple sequence alignment widely used in phylogenetics pipelines.

FASTA
C++Robert Edgar
Metabolomicsactive

MZmine

Interactive LC-MS data processing: peak picking, alignment, and ID.

mzML
JavaMZmine
Structural Biologyactive

NAMD

Highly scalable MD for large biomolecular systems, often paired with VMD.

PDBDCD
C++UIUC
Visualizationactive

napari

Fast n-dimensional image viewer with a deep plugin ecosystem — the Python-native canvas for imaging workflows.

Pythonnapari / CZI
Scientific Databasesactive

NASA ADS

Astrophysics Data System — the literature index for astronomy and physics.

MultiNASA / SAO
Connectomics & Seg.active

natverse

The NeuroAnatomy Toolbox suite in R for importing, transforming and analyzing connectomes and tracings.

RJefferis Lab
Connectomics & Seg.active

NAVis

Analyze and visualize neuron morphologies and skeletons; interoperates with CloudVolume and natverse.

Pythonnavis-org
Scientific Databasesactive

NCBI

National Center for Biotechnology Information — GenBank, PubMed, BLAST, SRA.

MultiNIH
Earth & Climateactive

NCO

NetCDF Operators for slicing, averaging, and rewriting climate files.

NetCDF
CNCO
Scientific Databasesactive

NED

NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database of galaxies and other extragalactic objects.

MultiIPAC
Neural Modelingactive

NeMoS

GPU-accelerated GLMs for spike-train analysis, powered by JAX, with a composable basis module. Pairs with pynapple.

NWB
PythonFlatiron / NeuroRSE
Simulationactive

Nengo

Builds large functional brain models with the Neural Engineering Framework; targets neuromorphic hardware.

PythonABR
Electrophysiologyactive

Neo

Shared object model plus readers for dozens of proprietary ephys formats. The I/O layer under the stack.

NWB
PythonNeuralEnsemble
Simulationactive

NEST

Highly scalable simulator for large networks of point neurons — millions of cells across HPC clusters.

C++NEST Initiative
Simulationactive

NetPyNE

Declarative interface for building, simulating (via NEURON) and analyzing multiscale network models.

PythonNeurosim Lab
Data Standardsactive

neuroconv

Converts data from dozens of acquisition and analysis formats into NWB with one uniform interface.

NWBSpikeInterface
PythonCatalystNeuro
Visualizationactive

neuroglancer

WebGL viewer for enormous volumetric EM/connectomics data. The standard for cloud-scale volume viewing.

TypeScriptGoogle Connectomics
Scientific Databasesactive

NeuroMorpho.Org

Inventory of digitally reconstructed neurons from many labs.

SWC
MultiGeorge Mason
Simulationactive

NEURON

Simulation of detailed biophysical neurons with complex morphology and ion channels.

PythonYale / NEURON
Workflows & Repro.active

Nextflow

Dataflow workflow engine for scalable, portable pipelines — the backbone of the nf-core community.

GroovySeqera
Workflows & Repro.active

Nextflow Tower

Seqera Platform for monitoring and launching Nextflow pipelines.

Nextflow
MultiSeqera
Workflows & Repro.active

nf-core

Community collection of production Nextflow pipelines for genomics and beyond.

Nextflow
Groovynf-core
Genomics & Single-cellactive

NicheNet

Predicts ligand–target links that explain receiver-cell expression changes.

RDS
RSaeys Lab
Medical Imagingactive

Nilearn

Machine learning for neuroimaging on top of scikit-learn and NiBabel.

NIfTI
PythonNilearn
Medical Imagingactive

Nipype

Pipelines that glue FSL, FreeSurfer, AFNI, SPM and Python into one workflow.

NIfTI
PythonNipype
Medical Imagingactive

nnU-Net

Self-configuring U-Net that is the default baseline for biomedical segmentation.

NIfTI
PythonDKFZ
Bioimagingactive

Noise2Void

Self-supervised denoising that trains on single noisy microscopy images.

TIFF
PythonCSBDeep
Scientific Computingactive

NumPy

The foundational n-dimensional array library nearly every scientific Python tool builds on.

PythonNumFOCUS
Visualizationactive

NWB Widgets

Interactive Jupyter widgets that let you browse and plot the full contents of any NWB file.

NWB
PythonNeurodataWithoutBorders
Data Standardsactive

nwbinspector

Checks NWB files against best practices and schema compliance before you publish or archive.

NWB
PythonNeurodataWithoutBorders
Chemistryactive

NWChem

Scalable computational chemistry for molecules and periodic systems.

XYZ
FortranPNNL
Bioimagingactive

OMERO

Client–server platform for storing, managing, and analyzing microscopy data.

OME-TIFF
JavaOME
Data Standardsactive

ONE

Open Neurophysiology Environment — a lightweight standard and API to search and load data across labs.

PythonInt. Brain Laboratory
Chemistryactive

Open Babel

Chemical toolbox for converting and searching 100+ molecule file formats.

SDFMOL2
C++Open Babel
Electrophysiologyactive

Open Ephys GUI

Free plugin-based system to acquire, process, record and visualize multichannel ephys. Includes an NWB engine.

NWB
C++Open Ephys
Lab Managementactive

OpenBIS

Open platform for managing biological and inventory data in the lab.

JavaETH Zurich
Chemistryactive

OpenEye Scientific

Commercial toolkit for shape, docking, and large-scale cheminformatics.

SDF
C++Cadence OpenEye
Engineering & CFDactive

OpenFOAM

The leading open-source toolbox for computational fluid dynamics.

C++OpenFOAM
Structural Biologyactive

OpenFold

Trainable, open PyTorch implementation of AlphaFold2.

FASTAPDB
PythonOpenFold
Structural Biologyactive

OpenMM

High-performance, extensible molecular simulation toolkit with GPU support.

PDB
PythonOpenMM
Proteomicsactive

OpenMS

Open framework for LC-MS data management, identification, and quantification.

mzML
C++OpenMS
Data Standardsactive

OpenNeuro

Free archive for sharing BIDS-formatted neuroimaging datasets — hundreds of studies.

BIDS
TypeScriptPoldrack Lab
Engineering & CFDactive

OpenSCAD

Programmatic 3D CAD for engineers who think in code.

STL
C++OpenSCAD
Chemistryactive

ORCA

Efficient quantum chemistry package widely used for spectroscopy and catalysis.

XYZ
C++Neese group
Earth & Climateactive

Orfeo Toolbox

Remote-sensing image processing library (segmentation, classification, SAR).

GeoTIFF
C++CNES
Scientific Computingactive

pandas

Fast, expressive data structures for tabular and time-series data.

PythonNumFOCUS
Earth & Climateactive

Pangeo

Community stack (xarray, Dask, Jupyter) for big geoscience data.

ZarrNetCDF
PythonPangeo
Workflows & Repro.active

papermill

Parameterize and execute Jupyter notebooks programmatically for reproducible, scheduled reporting.

Pythonnteract
Visualizationactive

ParaView

Parallel scientific visualization for CFD, FEA, and volumetric data.

VTK
C++Kitware
Workflows & Repro.active

Parsl

Parallel scripting in Python for HPC and cloud scientific workflows.

PythonParsl
Scientific Databasesactive

PDB

Protein Data Bank — experimentally determined 3D structures.

PDBmmCIF
MultiwwPDB
Proteomicsactive

Percolator

Semi-supervised SVM rescoring of peptide-spectrum matches.

mzid
C++Käll Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

Pfam

Protein family alignments and HMMs, now served through InterPro.

MultiEMBL-EBI
Proteomicsactive

pFind

Open search engine for peptide identification including open-search PTMs.

mgf
C++pFind Studio
Astronomyactive

Photutils

Source detection and photometry tools in the Astropy ecosystem.

FITS
PythonAstropy
Spike Sortingactive

Phy

GPU-accelerated GUI for manual curation — merge, split, label — of large-scale sorted ephys.

Pythoncortex-lab
AI for Scienceactive

ProGen

Generative language model for protein sequences.

FASTA
PythonSalesforce / Profluent
Structural Biologyactive

ProteinMPNN

Message-passing neural network for inverse protein design given a backbone.

PDB
PythonBaker Lab
Proteomicsactive

Proteome Discoverer

Commercial proteomics identification and quantification platform.

raw
MultiThermo Fisher
Chemistryactive

Psi4

Open-source quantum chemistry with a Python-first API.

XYZ
C++Psi4
Scientific Databasesactive

PubChem

Open chemistry database of molecules, bioassays, and patents.

SMILES
MultiNCBI
Chemistryactive

PubChemPy

Python wrapper for the PubChem PUG REST API.

SMILES
PythonMatt Swain
Neural Modelingactive

PyalData

Analysis of trial-based population data in a tidy trial_data structure ported from MATLAB TrialData.

PythonPerich / Gallego
Medical Imagingactive

pydicom

Read, modify, and write DICOM files in pure Python.

DICOM
Pythonpydicom
Neural Modelingactive

pyGLMnet

Elastic-net-regularized GLMs with a scikit-learn-style API, including Poisson GLMs for spike counts.

Pythonglm-tools
Neural Modelingactive

pymdp

Active inference and POMDP agents — simulate perception, learning and action under the free-energy principle.

Pythoninfer-actively
Structural Biologyactive

PyMOL

The default molecular visualization program for structures, surfaces, and figures.

PDB
PythonSchrödinger
Electrophysiologyactive

pynapple

Lightweight time-series and interval toolkit — tuning curves, correlograms, decoding, filtering. GPU via pynajax.

NWB
PythonFlatiron / Peyrache
Visualizationactive

pynaviz

Visualization companion to pynapple — interactive views of time series, intervals, tuning curves and spectrograms.

NWB
PythonFlatiron / pynapple
Data Standardsactive

PyNWB

Reference Python API for reading and writing Neurodata Without Borders files.

NWB
PythonNeurodataWithoutBorders
Proteomicsactive

pyOpenMS

Python bindings to OpenMS for scripting proteomics and metabolomics workflows.

mzML
PythonOpenMS
Chemistryactive

PySCF

Python-based ab initio quantum chemistry for molecules and extended systems.

XYZ
PythonPySCF
Scientific Computingactive

pytest

The standard testing framework — what turns research code into software people can trust.

Pythonpytest-dev
Physicsactive

Pythia

Lund Monte Carlo for high-energy particle collisions and hadronization.

C++Pythia
Visualizationactive

PyVista

Pythonic VTK for 3D plotting and mesh analysis.

VTK
PythonPyVista
Chemistryactive

Q-Chem

Commercial quantum chemistry with a broad method catalog.

XYZ
C++Q-Chem
Earth & Climateactive

QGIS

Free and open-source geographic information system for maps and analysis.

GeoTIFFShapefile
C++QGIS
Medical Imagingactive

QSIPrep

BIDS-app for preprocessing diffusion MRI with reproducible defaults.

NIfTIBIDS
PythonPennLINC
Chemistryactive

Quantum ESPRESSO

Plane-wave DFT suite for electronic-structure calculations and materials.

CIF
FortranQuantum ESPRESSO
Bioimagingactive

QuPath

Open-source digital pathology platform for whole-slide images and multiplex analysis.

OME-TIFF
JavaQuPath
Astronomyactive

RADMC-3D

Monte Carlo radiative transfer for dusty astrophysical environments.

FortranDullemond
Astronomyactive

RAMSES

Adaptive mesh refinement code for astrophysical hydrodynamics.

FortranTeyssier
Earth & Climateactive

Rasterio

Pythonic GDAL for reading and writing geospatial rasters.

GeoTIFF
PythonMapbox
Neural Modelingactive

Rastermap

Nonlinear embedding that sorts neurons by activity similarity to reveal structure in huge population recordings.

NWB
PythonMouseLand
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

RAxML-NG

Next-generation RAxML for phylogenetic trees on large alignments.

FASTA
C++Exelixis Lab
Chemistryactive

RDKit

Open-source cheminformatics: molecules, fingerprints, descriptors, and 2D/3D ops.

SMILESSDF
C++RDKit
Scientific Databasesactive

Reactome

Curated pathway database of human biological processes.

MultiReactome
Lab Managementactive

REDCap

Secure web application for building and managing research surveys and databases.

PHPVanderbilt
AI for Scienceactive

ResearchRabbit

Literature mapping that grows a collection from seed papers.

MultiResearchRabbit
Structural Biologyactive

RFdiffusion

Diffusion model for generating novel protein backbones and binders.

PDB
PythonBaker Lab
Workflows & Repro.active

RO-Crate

Packaging format that bundles data, metadata, and workflows for reuse.

RO-Crate
MultiResearch Object
Physicsactive

ROOT

Data analysis framework for particle physics — histograms, trees, and fitting.

ROOT
C++CERN
Structural Biologyactive

RoseTTAFold

Three-track network for protein structure prediction from Baker lab.

FASTAPDB
PythonBaker Lab
Lab Managementactive

RSpace

ELN and inventory with inventory, samples, and integrations.

JavaResearch Space
AI for Scienceactive

Sakana AI Scientist

Open experiment in fully automated scientific idea generation, coding, and paper writing.

PythonSakana AI
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

Salmon

Fast transcript quantification from RNA-seq via quasi-mapping.

FASTQ
C++COMBINE-lab
Engineering & CFDactive

Salome

Open-source pre/post-processing platform for numerical simulation.

MED
C++Open CASCADE
Genomics & Single-cellactive

samtools

Standard utilities for manipulating SAM/BAM/CRAM alignments — sorting, indexing, pileups.

Csamtools org
Astronomyactive

SAOImage DS9

Interactive astronomical imaging and data visualization for FITS.

FITS
C++SAO
Astronomyactive

SCAMP

Astrometric and photometric calibration against reference catalogues.

FITS
CAstromatic
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Scanpy

Scalable single-cell RNA-seq analysis — preprocessing, clustering, trajectory inference — on AnnData.

Pythonscverse
Genomics & Single-cellactive

scCODA

Compositional differential abundance testing for cell types.

h5ad
PythonTheis Lab
Bioimagingactive

scikit-image

Image-processing algorithms on NumPy arrays — filtering, segmentation, morphology.

Pythonscikit-image
Scientific Computingactive

scikit-learn

General-purpose machine learning — classification, regression, clustering, model selection.

Pythonscikit-learn
Lab Managementactive

SciNote

Open-source ELN with protocols, inventory, and team workflows.

RubySciNote
Scientific Computingactive

SciPy

Fundamental algorithms for scientific computing — optimization, signal processing, statistics.

PythonNumFOCUS
AI for Scienceactive

SciSpace

AI reader that explains papers, equations, and related work in context.

MultiSciSpace
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Scrublet

Detects cell doublets in scRNA-seq via simulated doublets.

h5ad
PythonWolock / Klein
Genomics & Single-cellactive

scvi-tools

Probabilistic deep-generative models for single-cell omics — integration, label transfer, DE.

Pythonscverse
AI for Scienceactive

Semantic Scholar

AI-powered academic search over a graph of papers, authors, and citations.

MultiAllen Institute
Earth & Climateactive

Sentinel Hub

API and processing for Sentinel, Landsat, and other EO archives.

GeoTIFF
MultiSinergise
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Seurat

The standard R toolkit for single-cell genomics: QC, integration, clustering and differential expression.

RSatija Lab
Astronomyactive

SExtractor

Source Extractor — detects and measures objects on astronomical images.

FITS
CBertin
Earth & Climateactive

Shapely

Manipulation and analysis of planar geometric objects.

WKT
PythonShapely
Physicsactive

Sherpa

Monte Carlo event generator for the Standard Model and BSM at colliders.

C++Sherpa
Genomics & Single-cellactive

Signac

Single-cell chromatin analysis extending Seurat to scATAC-seq.

RDS
RStuart Lab
Pose & Behavioractive

SimBA

GUI pipeline for building supervised behavioral classifiers from pose keypoints, focused on social behavior.

DeepLabCut
PythonGolden Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

SIMBAD

Astronomical object database with identifications, measurements, and bibliography.

MultiCDS
Medical Imagingactive

SimpleITK

Simplified ITK interface for registration, segmentation, and filtering.

NIfTIDICOM
C++Kitware / NIMH
Genomics & Single-cellactive

SingleR

Reference-based automatic cell-type annotation for single-cell RNA-seq.

h5ad
RBioconductor
Metabolomicsactive

SIRIUS

CSI:FingerID molecular formula and structure annotation from MS/MS.

mzML
JavaBöcker Lab
Proteomicsactive

Skyline

Windows GUI for targeted proteomics method building and quantification.

mzML
C#MacCoss Lab
Pose & Behavioractive

SLEAP

Deep-learning system for fast multi-animal 2D pose tracking with a choice of network backbones.

PythonTalmo Lab
Workflows & Repro.active

Snakemake

Python-like workflow manager for reproducible pipelines that scale from laptop to cluster to cloud.

Pythonsnakemake
Earth & Climateactive

SNAP

Sentinel Application Platform for optical and SAR Earth observation.

SAFE
JavaESA
Genomics & Single-cellactive

SnapATAC

Single-nucleus ATAC-seq analysis with a disk-backed matrix format.

snap
RFang Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

SnpEff

Genetic variant annotation and effect prediction for VCF files.

VCF
JavaSnpEff
Genomics & Single-cellactive

SoupX

Removes ambient RNA contamination from droplet scRNA-seq.

RDS
RYoung / Behjati
Spatial Biologyactive

SpaGCN

Graph CNN that integrates gene expression, spatial location, and histology.

h5ad
PythonHu Lab
Spatial Biologyactive

spatialdata

Unified data framework for spatial omics — images, points, shapes, and tables.

Zarr
Pythonscverse
Proteomicsactive

Spectronaut

Commercial DIA proteomics analysis from library to quantification.

mzML
MultiBiognosys
Astronomyactive

Specutils

Data models and analysis for astronomical spectra.

FITS
PythonAstropy
Electrophysiologyactive

SpikeGLX

High-channel-count acquisition GUI for Neuropixels with synchronized NI-DAQ. Read directly by SpikeInterface.

SpikeInterface
C++Karsh / Janelia
Spike Sortingactive

SpikeInterface

Unified API wrapping 15+ sorters plus preprocessing, metrics, curation and comparison — the hub of the ephys stack.

NWBNeo
PythonSpikeInterface
Medical Imagingactive

SPM

Statistical Parametric Mapping for PET, SPECT, EEG, and fMRI.

NIfTI
MATLABFIL UCL
Spike Sortingactive

SpyKING CIRCUS

Fast, scalable template-matching spike sorter that handles dense arrays across CPUs and clusters.

SpikeInterfaceNeo
PythonYger / Spampinato
Spatial Biologyactive

Squidpy

Spatial single-cell analysis on top of Scanpy — graphs, images, and neighborhood stats.

h5ad
PythonTheis Lab
Neural Modelingactive

ssm

Bayesian learning and inference for state-space models — HMMs, linear dynamical systems, recurrent SLDS.

PythonLinderman Lab
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

STAR

Ultrafast splice-aware aligner for RNA-seq, the default in many transcriptome pipelines.

FASTQBAM
C++Dobin Lab
Connectomics & Seg.active

StarDist

Segments nuclei and other star-convex objects with high accuracy, even in crowded fields.

napari
Pythonstardist
Genomics & Single-cellactive

STARsolo

STAR's built-in droplet scRNA-seq quantification, Cell Ranger–compatible.

FASTQ
C++Dobin Lab
Astronomyactive

Stellarium

Free planetarium for the real and simulated night sky.

C++Stellarium
Spatial Biologyactive

stLearn

Spatial transcriptomics analysis combining gene expression, location, and morphology.

h5ad
PythonCao Lab
Scientific Databasesactive

STRING

Protein–protein interaction networks and functional enrichment.

MultiSTRING
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

StringTie

Transcript assembly and quantification from RNA-seq alignments.

BAMGTF
C++Pertea Lab
Spatial Biologyactive

STUtility

R package for visualization and analysis of Spatial Transcriptomics / Visium.

Visium
RBergenstråhle
Engineering & CFDactive

SU2

Open-source CFD and design optimization for compressible flow.

C++Stanford SU2
Calcium Imagingactive

Suite2p

Registration, ROI detection and neuropil correction for two-photon imaging. Scales past 10,000 neurons.

PythonMouseLand
Astronomyactive

SunPy

Solar-physics data analysis built on Astropy.

FITS
PythonSunPy
Astronomyactive

SWarp

Resamples and co-adds FITS images onto a common grid.

FITS
CAstromatic
Spatial Biologyactive

Tangram

Maps single-cell profiles onto spatial data by aligning gene expression.

h5ad
PythonBroad Institute
Structural Biologyactive

TM-align

Sequence-independent protein structure alignment via TM-score.

PDB
C++Zhang Lab
Workflows & Repro.active

Toil

Scalable workflow engine that runs CWL, WDL, and Python workflows.

CWLWDL
PythonUCSC
Astronomyactive

TOPCAT

Interactive table viewer for catalogues, with VO and plotting.

FITSVOTable
JavaBristol
AI for Scienceactive

TorchDrug

PyTorch library for drug discovery, graph ML, and biomolecules.

SMILES
PythonMila
Medical Imagingactive

TorchIO

PyTorch data loading and augmentation for 3D medical images.

NIfTI
PythonTorchIO
Medical Imagingactive

TotalSegmentator

nnU-Net model that segments 100+ anatomical structures from CT.

NIfTIDICOM
PythonUniversity Hospital Basel
Spike Sortingactive

Tridesclous

Transparent, GUI-driven spike sorting emphasizing visualization of every step.

SpikeInterfaceNeo
PythonGarcia / Pouzat
Structural Biologyactive

UCSF ChimeraX

Next-gen Chimera for interactive visualization of atomic models and density maps.

PDBmmCIFMRC
PythonUCSF RBVI
AI for Scienceactive

Uni-Mol

3D molecular representation learning for docking, properties, and design.

SDF
PythonDP Technology
Scientific Databasesactive

UniProt

Universal protein knowledgebase — sequences, function, and annotations.

MultiUniProt
Pose & Behavioractive

VAME

Clusters behavior into motifs using a variational autoencoder over aligned pose sequences.

DeepLabCut
PythonKürsch / Remy
Genomics & Bioinformaticsactive

VEP

Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor — annotate variants against transcripts and regulatory features.

VCF
PerlEnsembl
Visualizationactive

VisIt

Interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis of scientific data.

VTK
C++LLNL
Scientific Databasesactive

VizieR

Query service for astronomical catalogues published in journals.

VOTable
MultiCDS
Structural Biologyactive

VMD

Visual Molecular Dynamics — trajectories, membranes, and huge biomolecular systems.

PDBDCD
C++UIUC
Visualizationactive

VTK

Visualization Toolkit — 3D computer graphics and image processing.

VTK
C++Kitware
Spike Sortingactive

WaveClus

Unsupervised spike detection and sorting via wavelets and superparamagnetic clustering.

MATLABQuian Quiroga Lab
Workflows & Repro.active

WDL

Workflow Description Language used by Cromwell, Terra, and many genomics pipelines.

WDL
MultiOpenWDL
Workflows & Repro.active

WorkflowHub

Registry for describing and sharing computational workflows across domains.

CWLRO-Crate
MultiWorkflowHub
Earth & Climateactive

WRF

Weather Research and Forecasting model for mesoscale NWP.

NetCDF
FortranNCAR
Scientific Computingactive

xarray

Labeled n-dimensional arrays for multi-dimensional scientific data; integrates with Dask and Zarr.

PythonNumFOCUS
Metabolomicsactive

XCMS

LC-MS feature detection, alignment, and correspondence for metabolomics.

mzML
RBioconductor
Astronomyactive

yt

Volume analysis and visualization for astrophysical simulation datasets.

HDF5
Pythonyt-project
Scientific Computingactive

Zarr

Chunked, compressed n-dimensional arrays for parallel and cloud computing. An optional NWB backend.

NWB
Pythonzarr-developers
Bioimagingactive

ZeroCostDL4Mic

Google Colab notebooks that put DL microscopy models in reach without local GPUs.

TIFF
PythonJacquemet / Henriques
Scientific Databasesactive

ZINC

Free database of commercially available compounds for virtual screening.

SMILES
MultiIrwin / Shoichet

About the Open Science Index

What is the Open Science Index?
A curated directory of scientific software — genomics, structural biology, chemistry, microscopy, neuroscience, medical imaging, astronomy, climate, physics, and more — filterable by domain, language, and format.
Which domains are covered?
Life sciences first (genomics, chemistry, structural biology, microscopy, neuroscience), plus medical imaging, astronomy, Earth/climate, physics, engineering, lab notebooks, and scientific databases.
Do you host the software?
No. Each card links to the project’s official site or GitHub. Install from the maintainers.
How is this different from an Awesome list?
Awesome lists are markdown dumps. This index is filterable by language, I/O, and maintenance status, and it sits next to Bibby’s writing tools.
Open-Source Scientific Software Directory — Genomics, Chemistry, Neuroscience & More | Bibby | Bibby AI