US-RSE May 2024 Newsletter

May 2024

newsletter May

Published: May 28, 2024

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:

1. Community and Travel Funds program: 4th German Conference on Research Software Engineering

Credit: Florian Goth & deRSE

Credit: Florian Goth & deRSE

Daniel S. Katz applied for and was selected to receive travel funding that allowed him to attend the 4th German Conference on Research Software Engineering (deRSE24, https://events.hifis.net/event/994/) in Würzburg, Germany, in March. He gave a 30-minute talk there on US-RSE, co-authored with Ian Cosden and Jeffrey C. Carver, titled “US-RSE: Today’s successes and tomorrow’s challenges.” Slides from the presentation, which were prepared and then discussed with current and past steering US-RSE committee members, are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10732103.

In addition to giving this talk, Dan enjoyed the overall conference, where he was able to catch up with some collaborators and members of the community he already knew, and to meet new colleagues, particularly during the meals, poster session, and social events. Some of the workshops, such as one on FAIR and Reproducible Code, organized by Heidi Seibold and others, were quite interesting, and there were also sessions that Dan enjoyed on building community around software, and RSE research, sustainable organization, and RSE community. The RSE research session in particular was interesting to Dan, as it was a topic that he also has seen in the UK RSECons, but that didn’t appear as one of the topics in US-RSE’23.

Overall, Dan is thankful to US-RSE and the Sloan Foundation for the opportunity to attend this conference, share information about US-RSE and other topics, and to learn what’s going on in Germany that can be used in the US.

Part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for US-RSE has been delegated for the Community and Travel Funds program. Members of US-RSE can apply for funds for community or individual purposes for event costs, get-togethers, travel funding, and more.

2. Membership Benefits

The US-RSE leadership team (Executive Director, Community Manager, and Steering Committee) has been strategizing about how to bring additional membership benefits to you, our valued members. We are excited to bring a new benefit, one that we hope is the first of many new tangible benefits for US-RSE members!

We’ve negotiated/partnered with the Agile Alliance to bring discounted rates to their upcoming conference. Agile Alliance is a global non-profit membership organization founded on the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. They support people and organizations who explore, apply and expand Agile values, principles, and practices. There is some clear overlap with US-RSE with goals in regard to agile development and material that can benefit people in agile software development and/or agile management.

Agile Alliance has their Agile 2024 conference from July 22-26th, 2024 at the Gaylord Texan. As a US-RSE member you can get $200 off the registration fee with this code specifically for US-RSE AA21US-RSE!

Do you have suggestions for other organizations that could be potential US-RSE partners? Or other member benefits that you’d like to see? If so email sandra@us-rse.org.

3. US-RSE Conference 2024 (USRSE’24)

Conference Updates

Travel Arrangements

Two hotels within a short walking distance are available with a special rate for those attending US-RSE’24. Are you getting ready and making travel arrangements? Please consider booking at one of these convenient locations! Visit the Travel page for codes, booking links, and more https://us-rse.org/usrse24/attend/travel/.

Important Dates

  • Papers and Notebooks: Monday, June 3 (Deadline Extension)
  • Posters and Talks: Monday, June 17
  • Conference Date: October 15-17, 2024, Albuquerque, NM

4. Community News

Community Calls

June Community Call

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

Call for Presenters: If you are interested in presenting, please get in touch with Julia Damerow and Abbey Roelofs in the #communitycalls channel or by messaging them directly.

May Community Call (Past)

The May Community Call was all about Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs).

Member Spotlight - Greg Lemieux

Greg Lemieux

Background

Hi! My name is Greg.

I have a background in aerospace engineering that was fueled by childhood dreams of space exploration and becoming an astronaut.

After completing an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering, I went on to become a mission designer gaining experience in both academic and industry settings. As a flight engineer working on a number of research missions at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, I started off writing simple scripts and conducting analyses on mission planning tasks. I then decided to move from research into industry where I worked for Maxar Space Systems, a company that makes Sirius XM Radio, DirectTV, and other communications spacecraft for various governments and private entities around the world. During this time, I was an orbit analyst and then a guidance, navigation and controls engineer.

Research Software Engineering

Eventually, I found that I enjoyed writing mathematical and scientific software. I realized that I wanted to do more of this and decided to go back to school part-time to get a Master’s degree at Purdue University. My major was in interdisciplinary engineering with a focus in computational engineering. In the end, I decided to leave industry to pursue the scientific software engineering roles that I was seeking. The JuliaCon conference in 2018 was pivotal in directing me towards a career in Research Software Engineering. I had enjoyed my time at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley and am thankful to have eventually ended up down the hill from there at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

I currently work as a software developer in the Climate and Ecosystem Science division on the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES) Model. I often tell people that I am living as close as one can get to having their dream job.

US-RSE Involvement

I co-chair the US-RSE RSE Empowerment in National Labs Working Group. Members from our working group recently collaborated together to design, deliver, and analyze group surveys as well as focus group discussions. We also presented on our working group efforts at the 2024 UCAR Improving Scientific Software conference. This year, we plan to further describe and effectively characterize the larger national lab population within US-RSE.

5. Interesting Events and Opportunities

💥Get Your Magical US-RSE Unicorn - Edition 2024!

Would you like to support US-RSE and get a magical unicorn? Our magical unicorn - Edition 2024 is here! https://give.communityin.org/02OaKa?ref=ab_5CNhbc

💥SGX3 Gateway Central Explainer Video Contest

The Gateway Central Explainer Video Contest, brought to you by the SGX3 Science Gateways Center of Excellence, is here to help elevate your project’s visibility and impact for your Gateway or Gateway Software Solution! Applications are due on June 1, 2024.

💥Center for Open-Source Research Software Stewardship and Advancement (CORSA)

The DOE-funded CORSA project has been collecting guidance, documents, examples, templates for open-source software projects, such as on governance, roadmaps, contributing, code of conduct, DEI, licenses, etc. Please feel free to add additional items, as PRs or new issues.

💥Call for Session Proposals - 2024 ADSA Annual Meeting

The ADSA Annual Meeting (ADSA’24) brings together data science practitioners, educators, and researchers from all disciplines to share approaches in data science research and education, with a strong emphasis on responsible data science. Submit a proposal!

💥Faculty Hackathon 2024

The FacultyHack@Gateway2024 will involve 10 Computer Science or science discipline area faculty.

Faculty teams will adapt High-Performance Computing (HPC) tools for use in their courses. They will leave with “ready-to-go” course outlines, supporting data, and identified resources. Each team will be assigned a technical mentor to help with this process. Teams completing all four (4) challenges receive a $1000 honorarium.

💥Survey on Generative AI for Scientific Software Development

Dr. Elle O’Brien at the University of Michigan will be conducting studies about how scientists are using generative AI tools as part of their scientific software development.

💥Survey to understand mentorship needs

Dr. Reed Milewicz from Sandia National Laboratories is conducting a survey on mentorship. The survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

💥Survey to understand how RSEs consider cybersecurity when writing software

Calling all research software engineers! We’re exploring how security is perceived in our community, and we want to hear from you. Whether you think about security every day or rarely think about security, your insights are invaluable to us. To participate, you will complete a survey that takes 20-30 minutes.

If you are willing to participate in this study, please click here.

💥Survey to better understand code review practices of RSEs

Dr. Jeffrey Carver, Dr. Nasir Eisty, and Md Ariful Malik of the University of Alabama are conducting a study to understand the practices, impacts and barriers of code review techniques for RSEs.

If you are willing to participate in this study, please click here.

Upcoming Events

💡Strengthening Development Workflows by Graphically Communicating Elements of Software Design

The webinar introduces the Unified Modeling Language (UML) through the book UML Distilled, while also describing and demonstrating tools and methods for UML automation. The webinar also discusses how this approach of focusing on software architecture can bring attention to the important and impactful craft of research software engineering.

Details: https://ideas-productivity.org/events/hpcbp-084-communicatingdesign

💡Summer School in Open Science + Research Software Engineering

In July 2024, the US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI) will be hosting a five-day workshop on open science and research software engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

💡Consortium for the Advancement of Scientific Software (CASS) Virtual Sessions

The recently established Consortium for the Advancement of Scientific Software (CASS) has announced eleven virtual sessions on scientific software, scheduled for June 11 – 13, 2024.

The virtual sessions, labeled the 2024 CASS Community Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) Days, are sponsored by CASS and hosted by the Partnering for Scientific Software Ecosystem Stewardship (PESO) project, a member team of CASS.

💡Better Scientific Software: Virtual Workshop on Multiproject CI/CD

This workshop on June 14 seeks to build a community of practice for developing and maintaining CI/CD workflows for multiple projects.

💡NetSci 2024 Satellite Workshop: Software Tools for Network Science

The Software Tools for Supporting Network Science event is a satellite meeting of NetSci 2024. The goal of the event is to facilitate communication and cooperation between the users and developers of network analysis software packages, as well as to provide a venue for presenting software-focused work at NetSci.

💡The accomplishments of the Exascale Computing Project

Supercomputing Spotlights is a new webinar series featuring short presentations that highlight the impact and successes of high-performance computing (HPC) throughout our world. Presentations, emphasizing achievements and opportunities in HPC, are intended for the broad international community, especially students and newcomers to the field.

💡Strengthening Development Workflows by Graphically Communicating Elements of Software Design

This presentation will take place on June 12, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT. Research software projects have unique constraints from funding agencies and incentives for the researchers who produce the software. To address these challenges and improve understanding of software architecture for research projects, this webinar presents methods for visually communicating elements of software design and incorporating them into typical software development workflows.

Details: https://ideas-productivity.org/events/hpcbp-084-communicatingdesign

💡The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

HICSS-58 (The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences) will take place on the Big Island from Jan 7 - 10, 2025. The submission deadline is on June 15, 2024.

Interesting Minitracks:

💡OSS Licensing for Research and Education

This is a short course that introduces researchers (doctoral students, postdocs, staff researchers and PIs) to the essentials of open-source software (OSS) licensing for research and educational purposes. The course duration should be about 3 hours when taught live, and we will also produce an online version for self-study.

💡Hamlyn Symposium in London: Open-Source Software for Surgical Technologies

Open-source software libraries for surgical technologies include areas on computer assisted surgery, medical robotics and medical imaging (e.g. SciKit-Surgery, 3DSlicer, Holohub, MONAI, PLUS, KitwareMedical, and FAST). These libraries have shown great progress in the last twenty years due to their rapid innovation and adaption to new technologies, continuous release of open software and datasets for algorithm evaluation, good documentation and educational resources for students, researchers, engineers and clinicians, and partnerships between academia and industry.

Details: https://www.hamlynsymposium.org/events/open-source-software-for-surgical-technologies-2/

Running List of Conferences and Events

Previously shared conferences and events.

6. Interesting Reads, Videos, or Podcasts

7. Steering Committee Update

In April 2024, the Steering Committee continued to look at logistics for the upcoming US-RSE’24 conference, identified a preferred potential location for US-RSE’25, and began conversations with a potential conference chair at this location. We also discussed and approved a proposal from the Executive Director to work with Agile Alliance to give our members a discount to their conference and continued to discuss organizational memberships. We heard from members of the Community and Travel Funds Committee about a shortage of reviewers for the recent round of submissions, and several Steering Committee members volunteered to assist in the review process. Finally, the Community Awards Committee chairs shared that the first round of community award recipients have been identified and will be announced at the end of May.

8. 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 are all 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:

9. Recent Job Postings

These opportunities were recently posted to the RSE Opportunities page:

  1. Research Software Engineer: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ Posted: May 21, 2024
  2. Postdoctoral Appointee – Machine Learning for X-ray Science: Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL USA Posted: May 16, 2024
  3. Research Scientist, Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN Posted: May 09, 2024
  4. Research Scientist II, Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN Posted: May 09, 2024
  5. Research Scientist III, Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN Posted: May 09, 2024
  6. Software Engineer- Modeling Workflows and Orchestration: NASA GSFC / Science Systems and Applications, Inc (SSAI), Greenbelt, MD / remote Posted: May 07, 2024
  7. Senior Research Full Stack Developer: Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN/Hybrid Posted: May 02, 2024
  8. Research Software Engineer: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD Posted: Apr 30, 2024
  9. Research Software Engineer II: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Posted: Apr 17, 2024
  10. Associate/Research Software Engineer/Senior: The National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL Posted: Apr 12, 2024
  11. Postdoctoral Research Associate - Grid Modeling: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, TN Posted: Apr 09, 2024
  12. Software Engineer: Statewide California Earthquake Center, Los Angeles, CA Posted: Apr 05, 2024
  13. Senior Software Engineer: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Pittsburgh, PA (remote eligible) Posted: Apr 05, 2024
  14. Research Software Engineer with UI/UX Concentration: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD Posted: Feb 27, 2024
  15. Software Engineer: Stanford University, Stanford, CA or remote Posted: Feb 16, 2024
  16. Software Scientist: Open Free Energy/Open Molecular Software Foundation, fully remote Posted: Jan 24, 2024
  17. Researcher and Engineer Positions in Advanced Wireless, Open RAN, and Rural Broadband: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa Posted: May 18, 2023
  1. Research Facilitator: North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND Posted: May 23, 2024
  2. Data Science Facilitator: UW-Madison Data Science Hub, Madison, WI Posted: May 21, 2024
  3. MS-CC Director of Cyberinfrastructure Programs: Internet2/Minority Serving-Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC), Remote Posted: May 01, 2024
  4. Research Data Analyst Associate: Northwestern University, Chicago, IL Posted: Apr 30, 2024

Other Job Boards

The following boards might also be of interest.

  1. Research Software Engineering Opportunities in other associations/societies
  2. Software Carpentries Job Opportunities
  3. Academic Data Science Alliance Jobs
  4. High Performance Computing (HPC) Jobs from hpc.social

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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