MHD-based global space weather models have mostly been developed and maintained at academic institutions. While the "free spirit" approach of academia enables the rapid emergence and testing of new ideas and methods, the lack of long-term stability and support makes this arrangement very challenging. This paper describes a successful example of a university-based group, the Center of Space Environment Modeling (CSEM) at the University of Michigan, that developed and maintained the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) and its core element, the BATS-R-US extended MHD code. It took a quarter of a century to develop this capability and reach its present level of maturity that makes it suitable for research use by the space physics community through the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) as well as operational use by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).
@article{arxiv.2105.13227,
title = {What Sustained Multi-Disciplinary Research Can Achieve: The Space Weather Modeling Framework},
author = {Tamas I. Gombosi and Yuxi Chen and Alex Glocer and Zhenguang Huang and Xianzhe Jia and Michael W. Liemohn and Ward B. Manchester and Tuija Pulkkinen and Nishtha Sachdeva and Qusai Al Shidi and Igor V. Sokolov and Judit Szente and Valeriy Tenishev and Gabor Toth and Bart van der Holst and Daniel T. Welling and Lulu Zhao and Shasha Zou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.13227},
year = {2021}
}