Stanford
OpenSource@Stanford

Open Source Software Prize

The Stanford Open Source Software Prize is a prize awarded to an open source software project that makes noteworthy contributions to the advancement of open source software development as scholarly work, demonstrates expertise and significant impact on research in its field, and acts as an exemplary model of open source best practices.

2025 Prize Winner

HELM (Holistic Evaluation of Language Models)

HELM is an open source Python framework under the Center for Research on Foundation Models for holistic, reproducible, and transparent evaluation of foundation models. It currently maintains 17 leaderboards and evaluates dozens of LLMs on technical capabilities, a diverse range of applications, and multiple languages and language aspects. Evaluation of LLMs is increasingly relevant in industry, policy, academia, and broader society, and this is embodied by HELM's remarkable adoption and large contributor base.

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2025 Prize Winner

DADA2 (Divisive Amplicon Denoising Algorithm)

DADA2 is an open source R package for characterizing microbial communities, with applications for understanding the microbiome and human health. It has spawned many downstream projects: 25,000+ paper citations, 735 verified software package, 26 patent citations. When challenged on replicability on review, the project PI made all data available in Stanford Digital Repository and expanded study cohort; successful replications followed.

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OpenSource@Stanford Community Prize

2025 Winners

  • James Douglass - Software Architect, Natural Capital Project
  • Fatima Pardo - Basic Life Research Scientist, Structural Biology
Woman working in laser lab
Peter Wegner, ''Monument to Change as It Changes"

Eligibility

To be considered for the Stanford Open Source Software Prize, the project must be included in the OpenSource@Stanford Projects Registry.

If you would like to add your project to the registry or amend an existing project, please contact the Technical Community Manager (Francesca Vera) with relevant information.

Consideration for the 2026 Prize will open next Spring.

(Note that we are currently focused on open source software intrinsic to research and scholarship, rather than administrative projects.)

Recognition

The prize will be awarded on a project-basis, with the winning project's team receiving:

  • Prize assertions to the ORCID records of contributing team members
  • A small accompanying cash prize
  • Recognition as the winners of the Stanford Open Source Software Prize

Past Winners

2024 Prize Winner

FlashAttention

FlashAttention is an algorithm that speeds up attention and reduces memory footprint to improve the efficiency of Transfomer models. The development of this algorithm is particularly impactful as the context length of large language models (LLMs) continues to scale up, and there has been a remarkable adoption of FlashAttention across industry as a result. The latest version, FlashAttention-2, was released in July 2023 to great excitement in scholarship and industry.

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2024 Prize Winner

Generalized Random Forests (GRF)

Generalized Random Forests (GRF) is a R package for forest-based statistical estimation and inference. In addition to providing methods for causal effect estimation, it provides a framework to create forests for new statistical tasks. GRF has demonstrated exceptional scholarly impact and acts as an exemplary model of open source best practices, including licensing, documentation, organization, and community management.

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