US-RSE August 2024 Newsletter

August 2024

newsletter August

Published: Aug 23, 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. Updates from the Executive Director

Recent and Current Activities

Our Executive Director, Sandra Gesing, is finalizing an organizational membership model in collaboration with the Steering Committee and the Community Manager. If you would like to know more and/or would like to suggest contacts at your affiliation for her to reach out to, then please email her at sandra@us-rse.org.

Sandra applied for several federal fundings (successfully or under review) and she is working with RBW Strategy on a fundraising strategy in the non-profit world. Furthermore, she is finalizing the second version of the business plan for US-RSE. Details are here.

Sandra’s Outreach in September

2. Fall Update🍂

Take a look at some of what we’ve been up to in the community over the past 8 months! Feel free to contact me (sophia@us-rse.org) or our Executive Director, Sandra Gesing (sandra@us-rse.org), if you would like to hear more or get involved! Fall Update Collage!

2024 Community and Staff Outreach Database

Community Member Outreach

Community Member Outreach

Staff Outreach

Staff Outreach

Opportunities to Get Involved

Please email me at sophia@us-rse.org or fill out an interest form if you are interested in assisting with a community pilot project and/or participating in a workshop/office hour session!

Other community manager projects and activities can be viewed here

3. Community and Travel Funds program

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.

Next Application Deadline September 30, 2024

Dagstuhl Seminar - Nasir Eisty

Overview of the purpose of funding

My name is Nasir Eisty, and I’m an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Boise State University. I applied individually for the US-RSE community grant, which funded my entire travel from Boise, Idaho, to Germany and covered the registration fee for the Dagstuhl Seminar. I attended a seminar titled “Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps,” held from April 14 to April 19, 2024, at Schloss Dagstuhl in Wadern, Germany. Dagstuhl Seminars are high-level, week-long meetings of leading computer science researchers, focusing on cutting-edge topics and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and intensive interaction to advance research and shape future directions in computer science.

Overview of my experience

The Dagstuhl Seminar 24161, “Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps,” included 36 participants from academia, national labs, and research centers across various countries. The participants were divided into two groups: software engineering researchers and research software engineers, aiming to reduce knowledge gaps and foster collaboration. We formed breakout groups based on common interests, reported our outcomes in large group discussions, and participated in other collective activities. The seminar aimed to bridge the knowledge gap, as there is currently insufficient transfer of state-of-the-art research knowledge between software engineering researchers and research software engineering. This gap contributes to an incomplete understanding of domain-specific and general challenges in research software engineering. Throughout the week, each group worked together and initiated vision papers, poster presentations, vlogs, and websites, continuing their efforts to disseminate the knowledge created during the seminar.

Benefits to RSEs/US-RSE

In general, this interactive seminar brought together the computer science and software engineering research community with the research software engineering community to define a common language and enhance reciprocal knowledge transfer. The outcomes from the seminar will significantly impact research software engineers (RSEs) in various ways, including community formation, the application of state-of-the-art software engineering practices, and the improvement of research software quality and reliability.

This seminar also directly advanced the US-RSE mission by providing RSEs with opportunities to share knowledge, build professional connections, and access resources. It promoted the impact of RSEs on research, highlighting their increasingly critical and valuable roles throughout the seminar, where two groups were actively engaged in discussions. Participants of this Dagstuhl seminar are continuing to collaborate on producing resources that not only bridge knowledge gaps but also increase RSEs’ visibility in other communities.

MAA Mathfest - Steven Clontz

Summary

US-RSE Community and Travel Funds were used to support a STEM education research software engineering community social at MAA Mathfest!

4. US-RSE Conference 2024 (USRSE’24)

Early bird registration ends September 1!

View our Full Program - All times listed are in Mountain Time (MT)!

Conference Registration

Conference Date

October 15-17, 2024, Albuquerque, NM

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/.

Travel Support Program

Applications are open. Review the details here https://us-rse.org/usrse24/2024-08-09-travel-support/

US-RSE 2024 Tutorials

Tutorials will be online only and conducted virtually in the weeks prior to the conference https://us-rse.org/usrse24/program/tutorials/.

US-RSE 2024 Preconference Sessions

Preconference sessions will be online and are currently set to take place on September 16, 18, and 20. More details to come!

5. Community News

Community Calls

September Community Call

The next community call will take place on Thursday, September 12, at 12pm ET/11am CT/10am MT/9am 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.

August Community Call (Past)

The August Community Call was a Community Coffee Chat☕.

RSE Empowerment in National Labs

The RSE Empowerment in National Labs working group is looking for US-RSE members to present in our “RSEs in the National Labs” series for our monthly calls in 2025! The goal of this series is to provide US-RSE members with a venue to hear about the diversity of experience working at the various US sponsored research institutions. If you are interested in presenting you experience, please reach out to the working group chairs.

The next RSE Empowerment in National Labs community call will be Tuesday September 24 at 1pm ET/ 12pm CT/ 11am MT / 10am PT and is open to all US-RSE members. We will be continuing our “RSEs in the National Labs” speaker series with a presentation from Jon Guyer. He will be talking about his experience working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). You can find a link to the call in the bookmarks section of the #national-labs Slack channel.

Local Meetups

Are you hosting a local meetup for RSEs? Have you hosted one in the past year? We would love to hear more about your experience. Please email sophia@us-rse.org or message me on Slack.

  • Upcoming Meetups
    • DMV-RSE in-person meetup on September 26

Member Spotlight - Lezlie España

Lezlie España

Background

Hi all! My name is Lezlie.

My ✨journey✨ to the research software engineering space has been a winding road, but we got there. I studied Computer Science and Psychology in college, was interested in neuroscience, and ended up working in my current lab during my final semester of school. Our lab does research on traumatic brain injuries, and I work specifically with neuroimaging/fMRI data that we get from studies on mild TBI and sports-related concussions. 🧠

Research Software Engineering

As I learned more about all of the software used in the neuroimaging space and started to work on being more efficient with my code and data processing, I started to look for other people working in similar fields. It became important for me to find community at the intersection of medical research/academia and programming. And of course that led me to US-RSE! 🎉

US-RSE Involvement

As part of US-RSE I’ve been involved in a couple behind-the-scenes projects. I hope those who have joined recently found the new member welcome/orientation helpful! That was one of my first projects as a community member. I was also involved in the revamp of our Code of Conduct and currently serve on the CoC enforcement committee.

6. 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

💥A Survey on Refactoring Practices in the Development of Scientific Software

The FORCOLAB at the University of Toronto (UofT)is conducting a research study on understanding the refactoring practices and challenges in open-source scientific software. The main objective is to better support refactoring tasks during scientific software development. Please share your refactoring experiences in open-source scientific software by completing this survey.

💥Survey on Software Environments for Heliophysics

For RSEs in helio/solar physics– IHDEA (International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance) has formed a working group to define common heliophysics tools/software in python which the community may one day be able to use and base their software off of. They are collecting some initial feedback about the kinds of software folks in the community are using using this short survey:https://forms.gle/DumtthpGytnhWpCk6.

💥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.

💥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

💡US-RSE will have a booth at the Supercomputing Conference in November

After the successes with our booths in the last years at SC, we will have again a booth at SC24, November 17-22, 2024 in Atlanta, GA. We are looking for volunteers to take over some booth times (1-2 hours). You can sign up here if you are interested.

💡US-RSE will have a booth at the AGU Fall Meeting in December

US-RSE will have the first time a booth at the AGU Fall Meeting from December 9-13, 2024 in Washington, DC. We are looking for volunteers to take over some booth times (3-4 hours). We can offer up to three free booth registrations for AGU. Please email Sandra Gesing at sandra@us-rse.org if you are interested in a booth registration.

💡Application for the Leadership-Class Computing Facility (LCCF) Internship Program at TACC

Are you interested in acquiring the computational skills necessary to enter the tech workforce? This unique opportunity includes training to access cutting-edge computing resources, workplace readiness training, and team-building opportunities. Hybrid and remote positions are available.

Application Deadline: September 9, 2024

Stipend Amount: Up to $10,500 for 21 weeks. Up to $30,000 per year.

Fall Internship Dates: October 2, 2024 - February 17, 2025, with the potential for continued support for a year.

Complete the Application!

💡Applications Open for the 2025 BSSw Fellowship Program

The BSSw Fellowship Program provides recognition and funding for leaders and advocates of high-quality scientific software who foster practices, processes, and tools to improve scientific software productivity and sustainability. BSSw Fellows are selected annually based on an application process that includes the proposal of a funded activity which promotes better scientific software through a publicly available artifact.

Q&A Webinar about the BSSw Fellowship Program

  • Tuesday, September 10, 2024, 2:00-3:00 PM EDT
  • Please subscribe to the mailing list to receive further details, including telecon information for the Q&A session.

Complete the Application

  • Apply Now
  • Application deadline: Monday, September 30, 2024; this is a firm deadline that will not be extended.

💡Registration for ParslFest 2024 is now open

This annual community event brings together researchers, developers, and cyberinfrastructure experts worldwide to discuss experiences using and developing Parsl and Globus Compute - a federated function-as-a-service platform related to Parsl. Register here: https://parsl-project.org/parslfest/parslfest2024.html

💡SmashingConf Online Workshops: Inclusive Design Patterns

Smashing Conference is offering a free 3.5 hour workshop about Inclusive Design Patterns on Sept 24.

Register here: https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/inclusive-design-patterns-vitaly-friedman/

💡Second Virtual Workshop on Multi-Project CI/CD

The Multi-ProjectDevOps project was founded to establish best practices for decreasing the time needed to deploy multiple high-quality scientific software packages, particularly when the packages share common requirements. Key to these best practices are maintaining continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows. Since the managed packages share common requirements the CI/CD workflows will too. We define a multi-project CI/CD workflow as a CI/CD workflow that can be reused for multiple projects. The purpose of this workshop is to share best practices, lessons learned, and solutions for multi-project CI/CD.

Registration is free. To sign up please fill out this Google form.

Running List of Conferences and Events

Previously shared conferences and events.

7. Interesting Reads, Videos, or Podcasts

8. Get Involved

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: Center for Digital Antiquity at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Posted: Aug 20, 2024
  2. Research Software Engineer (RSE): University of Delaware, DE (hybrid) Posted: Aug 14, 2024
  3. Research Software Engineer: University of Vermont, Burlington, VT Posted: Aug 09, 2024
  4. Computational Research Scientist II - Bone/Musculoskeletal Biomechanics: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  5. Computational Research Scientist I - Bone/Musculoskeletal Biomechanics: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  6. Computational Research Scientist III - Toxicology: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  7. Computational Research Scientist II - Toxicology: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  8. Lead Research Software Engineer: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Posted: Jul 22, 2024
  9. Software Engineer: Stanford University, Stanford, CA or Remote Posted: Jul 19, 2024
  10. Software Developer Beamline Controls: Berkeley Lab, Berkeley, California Posted: Jul 17, 2024
  11. Research Software Engineer: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY Posted: Jul 12, 2024
  12. Chief Technology Officer and Director for Software: NOIRLab/AURA, Tucson, AZ, USA La Serena, Chile Hilo, HI, USA Posted: Jul 11, 2024
  13. Cloud Data Scientist and Software Engineer: Earth Big Data, Remote, US Posted: Jul 10, 2024
  14. Database Engineer: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Hybrid/Remote (Ithaca, NY) Posted: Jun 27, 2024
  15. Software Engineering Manager: Library Innovation Lab, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA (Hybrid- and Remote-eligible) Posted: Jun 26, 2024
  16. Full-stack Software Engineer: Manifest Technologies, New Haven, CT / Remote Posted: Jun 24, 2024
  1. 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.

© US-RSE • 2021-2024 • US-RSE is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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