US-RSE November 2024 Newsletter

November 2024

newsletter November

Published: Nov 15, 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. US-RSE Conference 2024 (USRSE’24) Recap

The US-RSE’24 conference exceeded all expectations! With over 270 attendees, the energy and enthusiasm were apparent. We received over 100 submissions for the different program components. The resulting program offered something for everyone, including talks, workshops, and countless opportunities to connect with fellow RSEs. Highlights included insightful keynotes, engaging sponsor presentations, and hands-on tutorials covering a wide range of technical topics. The lively poster session and conference dinner provided the perfect setting for networking and knowledge sharing. This incredible event wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the organizing committee, reviewers, sponsors, presenters, and participants. Thank you to everyone who made US-RSE’24 such a success! We’re excited to continue supporting the growth and development of the RSE community.

2. USRSE’25: Join the Planning Committee

USRSE’25, our third annual conference, will be held in Philadelphia in October 2025. We need your help to make it successful. Learn more about the Planning Committee on the conference website and volunteer by the end of November. We need both people experienced with conference/event planning and those looking to learn, so that we can build experience within our community for the future.

Getting involved with the planning committee will ensure you know people at USRSE’25, connect you with other RSEs and RSE allies from around the country, and give you an opportunity to use skills that you might not get to exercise every day.

Learn More and Volunteer

3. Steering Committee Election

We are pleased to announce the following candidates for the upcoming US-RSE steering committee elections.

The candidates are:

  • Anees Ur Rahman
  • Chen Zhang
  • Cordero Core
  • Daniel Madren
  • Julia Damerow
  • Kenton McHenry
  • Lezlie Espana
  • Miranda Mundt
  • Sujata Goswami

More information about the candidates can be obtained on the Election webpage. Information on the election timeline, voting process, and any future updates can also be found on the election webpage.

4. Organizational Founding Membership

US-RSE envisions a future where it plays an essential role in promoting RSEs to be universally respected for advancing science, technology, and society through the transformative power of research software engineering.

We are excited to announce that the US-RSE offers an organizational founding membership!

Organizational founding members will be recognized in perpetuity as founding members of US-RSE. Every organization joining on or before November 30, 2025 will be considered an organizational founding member. The annual membership fees will remain the same for founding members until December 31, 2028.

By joining US-RSE as an organizational member, organizations will ensure the continuation and expansion of offerings such as the annual conference, monthly community calls, a monthly newsletter, a job board, working groups, and the creation of resources.

Current organizational founding members are (more are in the onboarding process)

5. 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: December 31, 2024

6. Community News

Annual General Meeting

Annual General Meeting Our 4th US-RSE Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place on Thursday December 5th, 2024 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET.

Join to hear about the 2024 year in review and plans for 2025, updates from our Executive Director & Working Groups, get insight into US-RSE’s finances and budget, and meet the candidates for the 2025-2026 Steering Committee Election.

All US-RSE members are invited to attend. Register for the meeting in advance here.

Community Calls

December Community Call

The next community call will take place on Friday, December 13, at 2-3pm ET. We will have an open session for last minute questions about the steering committee election. The last day to vote is on that Friday. If there are no questions, we can have a social hour talking about mocktails and cocktails.

November Community Call (Past)

The November Community Call was about Computational Workflows.

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, November 19 at 1pm ET/ 12pm CT/ 11am MT / 10am PT and is open to all US-RSE members. Note that this meeting will be held a week earlier than normal to avoid the Thanksgiving holiday week. We will continue our RSEs at National Labs speaker series and hear from Sara Miskovich about her experience working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. You can find a link to the call in the bookmarks section of the #national-labs Slack channel.

7. 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

💥NAIRR Portal - NSF-funded SGX3 requests your input

The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) is set to revolutionize AI research accessibility in the United States. A key part of this vision is the NAIRR Portal, a central hub connecting researchers, educators, and students with crucial AI resources.

The SGX3 – The Center of Excellence for Science Gateways - provides the NAIRR Pilot Portal and leads the effort on gathering contributions to the vision of a NAIRR Portal:

  • Take the NAIRR Portal User Survey
  • Share your valuable insights in focus groups by emailing SGX3 at help@sciencegateways.org
  • Share your interest in the in-person workshop February 4-5, 2025 in San Diego by completing the NAIRR Portal Workshop Interest Form and indicating whether you’ll need travel support.

💥FAIR principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS) 2-year review

Do you think the FAIR principles for Research Software are working?

2+ years after publishing, with over 500 people involved, we’re keen to understand if the FAIR principles have been useful & usable. If not, we’re asking the community what needs changing to make them work.

Survey: https://forms.gle/sRhRQD4gWBQWzcGS7

Webinars about the review process:

  1. Nov 25, 2024, 9 am ET / 8 am CT / 7 am MT / 6 am PT - https://illinois.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYkduiurTIvE9QYmlH6qg51h-SSoyprzUef
  2. Dec 5, 2024, 7 pm ET / 6 pm CT / 5 pm MT / 4 pm PT - https://illinois.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwod-6gqj4qE9Ewl7M-890S-VYNkUM4UiKh

💥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

💡RSE-HPC-2024 Workshop at SC24

We are excited to announce the Research Software Engineers in HPC Workshop (RSE-HPC-2024) to be held as part of SC24 (hybrid event, in Atlanta, GA and virtually). This will be a full-day workshop 9:00am-5:30pm EST (UTC-5), Sunday, November 17, 2024.

Participation is open to all SC24 attendees who have registered to attend the conference workshops.

For more information, see the workshop website or contact the organizers.

💡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 some booth time (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 a booth the first time at the AGU Fall Meeting from December 9-13, 2024 in Washington, DC. We are looking for volunteers to take some booth time (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.

💡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.

Interesting Minitracks:

  • Software Sustainability: Research on Usability, Maintainability and Reproducibility
  • Impact of AI on Software Engineering

💡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.

💡Open Source Software for Fusion Energy (OSSFE) Conference

The Open Source Software for Fusion Energy (OSSFE) Conference is a first-of-its-kind event dedicated to the development, use, and advancement of open-source software in the fusion energy community. Whether you’re an experienced researcher, developer, or new to the field, OSSFE offers a collaborative platform to share insights, tools, and innovations that push the boundaries of fusion energy research.

8. Interesting Reads, Videos, or Podcasts

9. Steering Committee Update

Our main focus in October was finalizing details and supporting the conference organizing committee for this year’s annual US-RSE conference, as well as announcing the USRSE’25 conference, which will take place in Philadelphia, PA. We heard updates from our Executive Director on the status of the Organizational Membership program and her progress with our fundraising consulting firm. We also started planning the US-RSE Annual General Meeting for December and worked out logistics following the departure of our Community Manager. Finally, most of the Steering Committee attended the annual conference, which was a great chance for us to meet up and talk in person!

10. Get Involved

Volunteering with US-RSE is a great way to build your professional network and gain skills that can help you take the next step in your career. A great way to start is by joining a working group. Reach out to contact@us-rse.org or ask on Slack if you have questions about getting started.

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:

11. Recent Job Postings

These opportunities were recently posted to the RSE Opportunities page:

  1. Data Systems Team Lead: University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO Posted: Nov 06, 2024
  2. Research Software Engineer: International Brain Laboratory, multiple locations, full remote work possible Posted: Nov 06, 2024
  3. Senior Cloud Engineering Team Lead: Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Greenbelt, MD Posted: Oct 30, 2024
  4. Sr. Software Engineer: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland Posted: Oct 24, 2024
  5. HPC Research Software Engineer: Amentum (NASA Contractor), Houston, TX (remote/flexible) Posted: Oct 22, 2024
  6. Research Software Developer: National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA Posted: Sep 23, 2024
  7. Quantum Architect, Simulation & Software: PsiQuantum, Palo Alto, CA or remote Posted: Sep 21, 2024
  8. Engineering Scientist: Texas Advanced Computing Center, Austin, Texas Posted: Sep 20, 2024
  9. Research Software Engineer II: Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Posted: Sep 18, 2024
  10. Senior Full-Stack Geospatial Developer: Eagle Rock Analytics, Sacramento, CA / Remote Posted: Sep 10, 2024
  11. Research Software Engineer: NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY Posted: Aug 26, 2024
  12. Computational Research Scientist II - Bone/Musculoskeletal Biomechanics: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  13. Computational Research Scientist I - Bne/Musculoskeletal Biomechanics: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  14. Computational Research Scientist III - Toxicology: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  15. Computational Research Scientist II - Toxicology: Henry M Jackson Foundation, Frederick, MD Posted: Jul 30, 2024
  16. Lead Research Software Engineer: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ Posted: Jul 22, 2024
  17. Software Engineer: Stanford University, Stanford, CA or Remote Posted: Jul 19, 2024
  18. Research Software Engineer: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY Posted: Jul 12, 2024
  19. Chief Technology Officer and Director for Software: NOIRLab AURA, Tucson, AZ, USA La Serena, Chile Hilo, HI, USA Posted: Jul 11, 2024
  20. Full-stack Software Engineer: Manifest Technologies, New Haven, CT / Remote Posted: Jun 24, 2024
  1. Director of Research Computing: Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH/Hybrid Posted: Sep 10, 2024
  2. Senior HPC Specialist: New York University, New York, NY (mostly remote - more than 60% of time) Posted: Sep 05, 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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