US-RSE March 2023 Newsletter

March 2023

newsletter March

Published: Mar 29, 2023

In this monthly newsletter, we share recent, current, and planned activities of the US-RSE Association, and related news that we think is of interest to US-RSE members. Newsletters are also available on our website alongside the growing resources and information on the US-RSE Association. To receive our newsletter, join US-RSE.

In this issue:

US-RSE Conference 2023 (US-RSE’23)

The US-RSE’23 General Chairs will be hosting a Community Call on April 14, 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT for the community to discuss the upcoming conference. We encourage all to join to learn more and ask questions.

Upcoming Submission Deadlines:

  • Workshops, Tutorials, and BoF submissions due: Tuesday, April 4, 2023 - EXTENDED
  • Papers / Notebooks due: Monday, May 1, 2023
  • Poster / Talk abstracts due: Monday, June 19, 2023

Submission Website: EasyChair

Questions? Contact the organizers at usrsecon2023@easychair.org.

Two-year Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant

We are thrilled to announce that US-RSE has received a two-year grant, totaling nearly $800k, from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation!

This grant represents a major turning point in our organization’s growth and will enable many new community initiatives, programs, and events over the coming years. We would like to express our deep gratitude to the Sloan Foundation for their generous support of US-RSE. It is a testament to the work that we are doing in the community, and we are honored to be recognized in this way.

More information will be available soon, including specific plans, programs, and opportunities to get involved.

We will post updates to the website, Slack, and email over the next few weeks. Additionally, we will host a special Community Call on Thursday, April 20 at 2ET/1CT/12MT/11PT to outline upcoming plans as well as provide an opportunity to answer any questions you may have. This call will be recorded and shared internally on Slack.

Thank you all for your ongoing support of, and participation in, US-RSE. Together, we can continue to make a difference for Research Software Engineers in the US.

Steering Committee Recap

So far in 2023, the Steering Committee has determined roles for 2023. See the complete list on the website. Ian Cosden remains the US-RSE Steering Committee Chair.

The Steering Committee also planned and executed the move to our new fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives, and is continuing planning for the 2023 US-RSE Conference. This has included discussion of potential costs and financial liabilities, such as hotel room blocks. Other Steering Committee discussion topics have included how to keep track of significant organizational developments to track our history, managing permissions for organizational resources, fundraising and US-RSE merchandise, and how to handle requests from external groups for time on community calls.

The Steering Committee also held its annual strategic planning meeting to talk about priorities for the coming year and long-term plans. See the blog post for a full recap. Topics included what it would mean for US-RSE to be a professional organization, how to achieve financial sustainability, cultivating and maintaining volunteers, and the evolution of the US-RSE conference.

Community News

Special Edition of Computing in Science & Engineering

Computing in Science & Engineering put out a special call for papers on the Future of Research Software Engineers in the US in 2022. Members of US-RSE contributed to several papers that will be featured in the special issue:

US-RSE Funders Talk Series: National Institutes of Health (NIH) and future talks

US-RSE is happy to be continuing its series of conversations with funders for 1) RSEs to learn about funding opportunities and review and other processes, 2) RSEs to ask questions of the funder, and 3) funders to ask questions and learn about RSEs.

Please join us in this interactive conversation. (If you can’t participate in the interactive event, where you will be able to ask questions and help funders understand US-RSE, it will also be recorded.)

Date/Time: Monday, April 3rd at 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 11am MT, 10am PT

Register Now!

The NIH Panel includes:

  • Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science
  • Ishwar Chandramouliswaran, Program Director, Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS)
  • Lori Scott-Sheldon, Program Chief, Data Science and Emerging Methodologies in HIV, Division of AIDS Research, National Institute of Mental Health
  • Heidi Sofia, Program Director, National Human Genomic Research Institute (NHGRI)

Following this event with NIH will be talks from:

  • Dr. Carly Strasser, Program Manager for Open Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Tuesday, May 9th at 4pm ET, 3pm CT, 2pm MT, 1pm PT (register now)
  • Dr. Varun Chandola, Program Director in the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Tuesday, June 20th at 12pm ET, 11am CT, 10am MT, 9am PT (registration coming soon)

RSE Group Leaders’ Network (RSE-GLN)

The RSE-GLN is a group of individuals leading RSE teams who come together to support their peers in meeting the challenges of leading RSE groups.

This group is primarily for those who currently lead a team and have, or are actively in the process of hiring, at least one direct report. Additional members may also be invited, such as those who have been in leadership positions in the past. This is to ensure that members have a network of peers in similar situations who are facing similar challenges. The group meets monthly.

The RSE-GLN also seeks to support aspiring RSE Group Leaders through a separate mentorship and development network. The Aspiring RSE-GLN is open to those looking to build RSE teams at their institution or move into RSE group leadership roles. There are no formal requirements, but those with the experience and qualifications to take on leadership roles will likely benefit more than early career RSEs.

Learn more and register.

US-RSE DEI-WG Speaker Series

The US-RSE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group (DEI-WG) is working to provide the US-RSE community quarterly visits from RSE professionals with vested interests or research into DEI in the RSE community at large. Our community pledges to continually educate ourselves through research on best practices focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The US-RSE is committed to providing an inclusive environment with equitable treatment for all and to promoting and encouraging diversity throughout the RSE community. We encourage everyone to suggest speakers and topics and are open to different formats and timelines of the events. Feedback is much appreciated.

US-RSE DEI-WG Media Club

The DEI Working Group hosts a regular Media Club discussion in which we invite participants to read, listen to, or watch the chosen DEI media and come ready to discuss the content as a small group. Next up is a discussion of this podcast on the Florida Department of Education rejecting an AP course on African American Studies, and what’s happening in higher education there in general. Listen to the podcast.

Link to register

Community Calls

April Community Call

The April community call will be on Friday, April 14, 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT.

The topic of this community call will be the first ever US-RSE conference, which will take place in Chicago, IL, October 16-18, 2023. We are committed to making this event successful! To ensure its usefulness to the US-RSE community, we’d like to hear your thoughts and ideas. That’s why this community call will be all about the conference. Are there specific events you would like to see? What would or wouldn’t make you attend? Do you have concrete ideas on how this conference could be useful to you? Join us and discuss with other members of the community.

Registration details You can register for this community call here.

Community Call - Special Edition

On Thursday, April 20 at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT we will host a special Community Call to outline upcoming plans for the new grant that US-RSE has received from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This will provide an opportunity to answer any questions you may have. The call will be recorded and shared internally on Slack.

Registration details You can register for this special Community Call here.

Interesting Events and Opportunities

INTERSECT RSEng Bootcamp - July 10-14, 2023

This 4.5-day event, targeting those who self-identify as intermediate research software developers with backgrounds in a research domain other than computer science, will cover RSE topics including:

  • Software Design
  • Working Collaboratively
  • Testing
  • CI/CD
  • Packaging & Distribution

Travel funding is available! For more information or to apply, visit https://intersect-training.org/bootcamp23/.

Upcoming Events

  • Research Software Engineers in HPC Minisymposium - as part of PASC23 in Davos, Switzerland June 26-28
  • Software Engineering for Research Software (SE4RS’23) - to be held in conjunction with PEARC’23 in Portland, OR July 23-27
  • Software Engineering for eScience (SE4eScience’23) - to be held in conjunction with eScience’23 in Cyprus October 9-13
  • Research Software Engineers in eScience (RSE-eScience-2023) - to be held in conjunction with eScience’23 in Cyprus October 9-13
  • Research Software Engineers in HPC (RSE-HPC-2023) - to be held in conjunction with SC23 in Denver, CO, November 12-17

Interesting Reads, Videos, or Podcasts

A note from Peter Schmidt on the two year anniversary of his podcast, Code for Thought:

Two Years of Code for Thought

On 12 January 2021, the first episode of Code for Thought, the podcast show for research and software engineering, went live with ‘And so it begins…’ At the time, I was quite nervous about launching the podcast. After all, I just barely started co-hosting podcast episodes with the wonderful Vanessa Sochat and her ‘RSE Stories’ show (now Developer Stories). On top of that, with podcasting being very popular and so many shows to choose from, where would this one end up?

Well, two years and nearly 60 episodes later, I am pleased to say the podcast has found its place. In that period the community of research software engineers has grown steadily, not only in the UK but globally.

At the same time, the questions that have puzzled us RSEs for so long still persist: How do we get recognition and proper support for the work we do? And while in some countries, like the UK, research centres and universities have been building teams of RSEs, in other countries such roles still need to be defined and funded.

All of this means that the work of raising awareness of research software engineering and growing our community must continue. And it should do so on an international level as well as on a local and national one.

Podcasting is a great way of helping to achieve that and I am delighted to continue and even increase the effort on Code for Thought. This means increasing the visibility of research and software engineering not only in the UK but elsewhere in the world.

In the annual report from the Code for Thought hosting site I read that the podcast has been listened to by people from 59 different countries. Which blew my mind away. But it also showed that the podcast needs to serve a wider community.

To keep this podcast as a true community effort it is important to hear from you! I look forward to hear about your ideas, comments and suggestions on email, LinkedIn, UK Slack workspace (@code4thought), Mastodon, and GitHub news/blogs.

My heartfelt thanks for listening and supporting this podcast. I wish you all the best for 2023 and I hope you enjoy the show.

Peter

Items you may have missed on the blog and Slack:

US-RSE Outreach

The Outreach Working Group is looking for volunteers to help with organizing workshops, birds of a feather (BoFs), symposiums, etc. Roles range from organizer to reviewer to speaker and more.

If you are interested in getting involved in a US-RSE hosted event, please reach out to the working group via the #wg-outreach slack channel or wg-outreach@us-rse.org.

US-RSE Has a New Fiscal Sponsor!

We’re excited to announce that US-RSE has switched to a new fiscal sponsor. We are now a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives (CI)! Our previous fiscal sponsor, Open Collective Foundation (OCF), represented an important first step allowing us to accept donations and making it possible to reimburse members for expenses they incurred on behalf of US-RSE. Moving forward, Community Initiatives’ additional tools, resources, and infrastructure will better serve US-RSE’s future organizational and financial goals.

Get Involved

There are lots of ways to get involved with the US-RSE community. Of course, you can join us on Slack. We’re also looking for ideas and help in many other places. See our list of projects and let us know how you’d like to help. Help with things like the Website Committee, Social Media, Community Engagement, Fundraising, and Newsletter is needed and welcome.

New guidance was recently released on how to create new Affinity Groups and Working Groups. If you see an unmet need in the US-RSE community, we encourage you to create your own group!

As always we thank everyone who is already contributing for their help in shaping and growing the organization.

US-RSE Working Groups:

Recent Job Postings

These opportunities were recently posted to the RSE Opportunities page:

  1. R&D Software Engineer III: University of Arizona, Department of Hydrology, Tucson, AZ Posted: Mar 28, 2023
  2. Software Engineer - CliMA Project: Caltech, Pasadena, CA Posted: Mar 27, 2023
  3. Python Object Oriented Software Engineer for NOAA Project: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Boulder, CO Posted: Mar 24, 2023
  4. Research Software Engineer: Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL Posted: Mar 23, 2023
  5. Manager, Scientific Software Engineer: Pfizer, Pearl River, NY Posted: Mar 14, 2023
  6. Manager, Scientific Software Engineer: Pfizer, Pearl River, NY Posted: Mar 14, 2023
  7. Software Dev Analyst II: Tufts Medicine CTSI, remote Posted: Mar 13, 2023
  8. Application Developer: Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN Posted: Mar 13, 2023
  9. Lead Research Analyst: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, remote/flexible Posted: Mar 10, 2023
  10. Senior Research Software Engineer: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey Posted: Mar 10, 2023

Other Job Boards

The following boards might also be of interest.

  1. Software Carpentries Job Opportunities
  2. Academic Data Science Alliance Jobs
  3. Society of Research Software Engineering Vacancies

Please read our job posting policy first, then fill out this google form to request additions to the job board.

This newsletter is a joint effort of members of the US-RSE Association.

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