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Who are research software engineers?

Research relies on software experts

By Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director, Software Sustainability Institute.

Most research would be impossible without software, and this reliance is forcing a rethink of the skills needed in a traditional research group. A survey of 15 Russell Group universities found that 92% of researchers used research software, 67% reported that it was fundamental to their research, and 56% said they developed their own software.

With the emergence of software as the pre-eminent research tool used across all disciplines, comes the realisation that a significant majority of results are based, ultimately, on the skill of the experts who design and build it. Since 2012, a community of these experts has grown around a campaign to raise awareness of the people who build the software used in research. These people have worked under many titles, but many now identify as Research Software Engineers.

The most popular software packages used in research are all, broadly speaking, programming languages. These allow researchers to develop their own programs to solve problems specific to their research. Some of these programs develop into substantial software packages with millions of lines of code, but to concentrate only on these headline-grabbing examples is to overlook the ubiquity of software in research. Millions of pro­grams are used by researchers to analyse and transform their data. These are the real workhorses of research, and without them the vast majority of results could not be produced. Who writes these programs if there is no career path for a software expert in academia?

The established approach to recruiting software expertise is a hotch­potch of different solutions that have been developed to meet the disparate needs of local human resources and finance depart­ments, university culture and restrictions from funders. This lack of consistency has created an unrecognised and tenuous exist­ence for the people who develop software in academia, and this severely limits the number of people who can help researchers benefit from software.

Since 2013, the UK has led the world in recognising the importance of research software engineering. This has been the result of a grass-roots campaign, initiated and still supported by the Software Sustainability Institue (SSI), but since coordinated by the research software engineering community itself. The campaign has witnessed the rapid growth of an active community of over 1100 Research Software Engineers – a success which is being emulated from Australia to the US. It has seen the proliferation of a new type of group which pools software expertise across a university so that researchers can hire experts when they need them. It is a campaign that it backed by a growing number of research funders – for example, the EPSRC which invested millions into an RSE Fellowship – and hope that providing access to software experts will improve the reliability, reproducibility and reusability of the software used in research.

The RSE Conference was founded in 2016 to help the rapidly growing community coalesce. The first conference brought together 202 RSEs from 16 different countries, the second conference repeated this success and sold out the conference venue, and the third – this year’s conference – aims to double attendance. If you use software in research and want to talk about your work, then the RSE Conference is a great way to enter the community. If you like what you see, you can join the UK RSE Association .

Our grassroots community has achieved a number of successes, but there is much work still to be done. We must convince all research stakeholders of the vital link between reliable software and reliable results, and we must provide robust careers for RSEs and we must continue to make an RSE service available across all academic organisations. By providing the expertise needed by modern research groups, we will promote the development of well-engineered software that will increase the scope, productivity and reliability of research.

 

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Research Software Engineers (RSE) 2018 conference

The 3rd RSE conference will take place in Birmingham 3-4-SEP-2018.

If you develop, port, modify, document, use, maintain, optimise, verify, distribute or otherwise interact with research software, this event is for you. The 2017 RSE conference included a range of talks on best practice, common challenges, RSE career progression and recognition, validation, reproducible science, etc.

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TMCS VI – Theory, Modelling and Computational Methods for Semiconductors – 11-13 April 2018

The IOP Computational Physics Group is co-sponsoring this meeting:

http://www.tmcsuk.org/conferences/TMCSVI

The conference will run from Wed 11th – Fri 13th April 2018 at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.

A training day for PhD students and early career researchers will be held on day 1, followed by 2 days of contributed, poster and invited presentation.

Topics include:
– Application of Density Functional Theory
– Tight Binding, Pseudopotential and Effective Mass Models for Electronic Structure
– Empirical Potential Methods for Calculation of Structural Properties
– Multi-scale Approaches
– Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors
– 2-D Semiconducting Systems
– Photonic Structures and Open Systems
– Optical and Transport Properties of Quantum Nanostructures including Colloids and Nanotubes
– Plasmonics
– Electronic and Photonic Devices
– System demands and applications

The registration opened 19-MAR.

 

 

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45th IOP Plasma Physics Conference

The IOP Computational Physics Group is sponsoring this event on the 9-12 April 2018 at Queens University Belfast, UK.

IOP Plasma Physics Conference

This conference covers all aspects of plasma physics, including Magnetic and Inertial confinement fusion, Astrophysical and Space Plasmas, Low Density and Technological/Industrial Plasmas, Low Temperature Plasmas, High Energy Density and Laser Plasmas, Dusty and Complex plasmas, Plasma Surface interactions, Plasma Applications including Medical applications and Plasma Diagnostics.

Invited speakers include Matthew Carr from CCFE on Synthetic divertor diagnostics for integrated data analysis with ray-tracing. Clare Scullion from Queen’s University Belfast on Investigations of ion acceleration from solid targets driven by ultrashort laser pulses and Jena Meinecke from the University of Oxford on Investigating the origins of magnetic fields using the National Ignition Facility.

As well as the scientific talk programme, the conference includes a conference dinner at City Hall, poster sessions and an Evening Outreach Event.

Registration deadline is 26th March 2018.

Register now.

 

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IoP Computational Physics Group Thesis Prize 2018

The Committee of the Institute of Physics Computational Physics Group welcomes applications for its annual thesis prize. The prize is awarded to the author of the PhD thesis that, in the opinion of the Committee, contributes most strongly to the advancement of computational physics. Runner-up prizes may also be awarded. Prize winners will be invited to write a feature article in the Computational Physics Group newsletter.

Entry is open to all students from an institution in the UK or Ireland, whose PhD examination has taken place since 1st January 2017 and up to the submission deadline of 30th April 2018, and who did not apply for the CPG Thesis Prize in the previous year.

Candidates are asked to note that if a similar thesis prize is offered by another IOP group (such as the Theory of Condensed Matter group), the Committee intends to liaise with that group so that both prizes will not be awarded to the same applicant.

Submission format

  • A four page (A4) abstract
  • A one page (A4) citation from the PhD supervisor, including confirmation of the date of PhD examination, that the student passed and whether the thesis has also been submitted to another IOP group for a PhD thesis prize
  • A one page (A4) confidential report from the external thesis examiner

Entries (PDF documents preferred) should be submitted by email, with “IOP CPG Thesis Prize” as the subject header, to Dr Arash Mostofi (a.mostofi@imperial.ac.uk). Any queries should also be directed to Dr Arash Mostofi.

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EPS Survey – Open Science and Career Development

European Physical Society would like to invite as many physicists in Europe as possible to express their views on Open Science and Career Development:

https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/EPSOS

The survey is carried out in collaboration with the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc) and with the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP) of the European Commission. The survey was specifically formulated to suit the European physicists community, with a particular focus on young physicists. The results of this survey will be used to guide European policy on open science and to improve the career development of researchers.

The deadline for completion is 15 April 2018.

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2018 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics – deadline 30-MAR-2018

Nominations are open for the 2018 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics run by The Commission on Computational Physics (C20)  – Deadline: 30 March 2018.

The prize consists of 1000 euros, a medal, and a certificate.

The awards will be made at the Commission’s next Conference on Computational Physics (CCP2018) to be held in UC Davis, Davis, CA, USA 29th July -2nd August 2018. The winner will also be invited to present a paper at this meeting.

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The Exascale Applications and Software Conference, Edinburgh, 17-19 April 2018

EASC 2018

This is the 5th conference in the series. EASC typically contains many talks of interest to a computational physicist, e.g. computational plasma, CFD, MD, ab-initio, thermo-mechanical problems, materials science, flood predictions, etc. There are always top class key speakers, and updates on the latest HPC technology.

The event is organised by EPCC who maintain ARCHER , the UK national HPC system.