{"id":4156,"date":"2026-03-12T08:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/?p=4156"},"modified":"2026-03-12T08:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T12:19:09","slug":"k-wave-team-releases-new-toolbox-version-in-collaboration-with-ucls-rse-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/matlab\/2026\/03\/12\/k-wave-team-releases-new-toolbox-version-in-collaboration-with-ucls-rse-group\/","title":{"rendered":"k-Wave team releases new toolbox version in collaboration with UCL’s RSE group"},"content":{"rendered":"
k-Wave<\/span><\/a> is a MATLAB community toolbox with a track record that includes over 2,500 citations on Google Scholar and over 7,600 downloads on File Exchange. It is built for the \"time-domain simulation of acoustic wave fields\" and was recently highlighted as a <\/span>Pick of the Week<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/div>
In December, release v1.4.1 <\/span>was published on GitHub<\/span><\/a>. The release included quality and maintainability enhancements supported by a new code contributor, Stella Prins, who is a Research Software Engineer (RSE) at University College London (UCL)'s<\/span> <\/span>Advanced Research Computing Centre<\/span><\/a> <\/span>where she co-leads the <\/span>Life Sciences Collaborations team<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> <\/span><\/div>
Her contributions in 2025 spanned several software engineering aspects, including the addition of continuous integration (CI), fixing several bugs, and updating date\/time handling to use<\/span> <\/span>datetime<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/div>
The MATLAB Community Toolbox Program sponsored these contributions, and is happy to see them now integrated into a release ready for k-Wave users. <\/span><\/div>
Before I joined MathWorks, I was a Research Software Engineer myself and <\/span>co-founded the RSE group at University of Sheffield<\/span><\/a>. As such, I am really happy to be collaborating with the community again via the MATLAB Community Toolbox Program on the development of open-source MATLAB toolboxes such as k-Wave. <\/span><\/div>
I caught up with Stella late last year to discuss her work on the k-Wave project.<\/span><\/div>
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Had you used MATLAB before this project?<\/span><\/div>
Yes, a lot. MATLAB has a special place in my heart because it was the first programming language I ever used. I studied psychology as a bachelor degree at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.<\/span><\/div>
Even in my first year, I was already fascinated by research. We used MATLAB for conducting experiments and also used it for EEG processing, fMRI and so on. In the final year of my bachelor degree, I picked the six month project that was the most programming heavy. So for six months I was programming away in MATLAB and I have really good memories.<\/span><\/div>
I also used it alongside other languages such as R and Python throughout my PhD and postdoc career.<\/span><\/div>
What was one of the things you learned about MATLAB during this project?<\/span><\/div>
One of the biggest things I did as part of this project was set up the <\/span>Continuous Integration<\/span><\/a> (CI), something I hadn't done before in MATLAB but it was pretty straightforward. There's now a <\/span>GitHub actions workflow for CI of unit tests in k-wave<\/span><\/a> as a result of this work.<\/span><\/div>
The RSE group at UCL was one of the first in the world and a model for many of the groups that followed. It has been great working with you.<\/span><\/div>
Thanks. We are strong proponents of open source software in research and so it's really great to see MathWorks supporting projects like this more. I'm looking forward to the next one.<\/span><\/div>
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