Hello Imperial researchers and RSEs! Spring is here and I hope you’re all well and have been enjoying the sunshine even if it’s still rather cold! As 2021 progresses there’s hope that with every passing month, we’re that bit closer to being able to get back to in-person events and activities.
This month we have a call out for new committee members for our Imperial Research Software Community. If you’re enthusiastic about the importance of software in research and are keen to help with aspects such as growing the community, providing training and events and raising the profile of RSE within the College, why not think about volunteering to join the committee - see the news section below for further details. This month we’re also announcing the launch of our new “DeepLearners” AI/ML group.
As we head into the summer and beyond, we can begin to look forward to the opportunity to start meeting and networking with other researchers and RSEs in person, although it’s quite likely that online events are here to stay in one form or another. For now though, things remain exclusively online but that’s not proved to be a barrier as you’ll see from the wide range of content we have for you in this month’s packed newsletter. Read on to find out more and, as always, please do get in touch with us if you have an event you’d like us to advertise or a news item to highlight.
In this month’s newsletter:
The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) are creating a new Intermediate Software Development training course for which an online pilot will be run in May-June. If you’re interested in attending this course, there is a form available where you can express interest by the end of April. See the SSI’s announcement of the course pilot for further details and a link to the expression of interest form.
Registration opens on the 4th May for the next Graphical User Interfaces for Research Software workshop being organised by Imperial RSE team member, Diego Alonso Álvarez. The first workshop in this series has proved extremely popular and we anticipate places going rapidly for this second workshop which will take place 22nd-24th June 2021.
csv,conf,v6 takes place on 4th-5th May and registration is free and still open. The conference looks at data sharing and analysis in the areas of science, journalism, government and open source.
US-RSE will be running their 2021 Virtual Workshop over two, non-consecutive, half-days - 24th May and 27th May 2021, 6pm-9pm BST. Two calls are currently open, one for abstract submissions and one for reviewers. The deadline for both is 3rd May and you can find full details on the workshop webpage.
The closing date for the current call for participation in the HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access visitor programme is 13th May 2021. The programme provides the opportunity to make a research visit to a participating centre in another European country to make use of HPC infrastructure to help enhance your research activities. You can find further information and submit an application via the HPC-Europa3 call page. The programme is co-ordinated by EPCC and you can also find some further details about the scheme on EPCC’s HPC-Europa3 visitor programme page.
A final reminder to make your submissions to the hidden REF competition that is looking to recognise ALL research outputs. If you undertake work that contributes to research or helps to support and underpin the quality of research outputs, but that doesn’t get considered through the regular REF exercise, take a look at the wide range of categories available under the hidden REF and consider making one or more submissions. The deadline for hidden REF submissions is 14th May 2021.
The RSLondon Community will be running two Software Carpentry workshops in mid-May, which members of Imperial’s Research Software Community are helping to organise. One workshop will cover a Python syllabus (Bash shell, Git, Python programming) while the other will cover an R syllabus (Bash shell, Git, R programming). Registration for both workshops is now open and you can find further information, dates and registration details on the Python workshop and R workshop pages. Note that we also have a call open for instructors and helpers for these workshops. See details in the News section below if you’re interested to get involved.
In this month’s news we have a few opportunities to bring to your attention. This includes the launch of our new “DeepLearners” group for anyone interested in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning, a call for new committee members to help run and grow our community and play an important role in supporting researchers and RSEs writing software at Imperial, and a call for Software Carpentry instructors/helpers for two upcoming workshops.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) methods and techniques have gained huge importance in the research community over the last few years. So many people seem to be talking about Machine Learning and many areas of research, from Medicine to Engineering, are now using these technologies to automate and enhance previously labour-intensive processes or undertake data analysis at a scale that would not have been possible just a few years ago. Many members of the RSE community are involved in work that has a Machine Learning element. However, there are also many of us who are aware of this high-profile area but haven’t yet had the chance to develop our skills. Imperial Research Software Community’s new “DeepLearners” AI/ML Group, led by Marlene Pinzi, is here to help. Whether you’re an experienced AI/ML researcher or you’re completely new to the area but keen to learn, the group will offer something for you. From paper reading and discussion groups to training and hackathons, we have a number of ideas and we’re here to help Imperial researchers grow their skills and support each other.
We’ll be launching the group with an introductory session in May where you’ll have a chance to tell us what activities you’d like to see and, if you’d like to contribute, where you can help. To register your interest in this new group and let us know if you’d like to be notified of the launch event, you can complete this form (Imperial login required). To support this group, we’re also launching a new channel in our Imperial RS Community Slack workspace #DeepLearners. If you’re not already a member of our Slack workspace, you can join here.
Are you passionate about research software and how it contributes to research outputs within Imperial and beyond?
Are you enthusiastic about the important roles that training, knowledge exchange, community and networking play in supporting the work of researchers and RSEs?
Do you want to help keep your peers informed about what’s happening with RSE and contribute to developing new ideas and policies around research software?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, why not consider volunteering to join our research software community committee and helping to shape the role of research software at Imperial. Committee members help to organise and run a range of research software events and training courses, maintain our website and promote the importance of maintainable, sustainable, robust research software across the College. Contact Jeremy Cohen if you’d like to volunteer as a committee member or you have any questions about what’s involved.
We are pleased to announce two upcoming opportunities to get involved as a Software Carpentry instructor or helper. The RSLondon research software community is running two Software Carpentry workshops - one covering an R syllabus, the other covering Python - with sessions taking place between the 20th-27th May (inclusive).
These RSLondon workshops are being organised by a group including representatives from 4 universities - Imperial, UCL, Queen Mary and Westminster. The audience, instructors and helpers will come from a combination of these institutions, and others within the London and South East of England region. In addition to the standard Software Carpentry teaching model, we will allow more time for more exercises, which will be undertaken in small breakout groups that will each have a dedicated helper.
If you’d like to sign up as a helper at one or more of the following sessions, please complete this form: (Imperial login required).
Shell / Git / Python:
https://rslondon.github.io/2021-05-20-rslondon-python/
| Session Date | Session Time | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 20th May | 10:00 - 12:00, 14:00 - 16:00 | Bash shell |
| Friday 21st May | 10:00 - 12:00, 14:00 - 16:00 | Git |
| Monday 24th May | 13:30 - 17:00 | Python - Part 1 |
| Tuesday 25th May | 10:00 - 13:30 | Python - Part 2 |
Shell / Git / R:
https://rslondon.github.io/2021-05-20-rslondon-R
| Session Date | Session Time | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 20th May | 10:00 - 12:00, 14:00 - 16:00 | Bash shell |
| Friday 21st May | 10:00 - 12:00, 14:00 - 16:00 | Git |
| Tuesday 25th May | 14:00 - 17:00 | R - Part 1 |
| Wednesday 26th May | 14:00 - 17:00 | R - Part 2 |
| Thursday 27th May | 14:00 - 17:00 | R - Part 3 |
Thanks in advance for any help you’re able to offer with these workshops. If you’re interested to help out but you have questions, please get in touch via email.
Also in this month’s news:
The SORSE series of online research software events concluded on the 24th March 2021 with its finale event. The video of the session is now available online, as are videos from many of the other sessions run by SORSE between September 2020 and March 2021.
The 4th ARCHER2 eCSE call opened just over a week ago. Applications require two submissions with a deadline of 18th May for technical evaluations and 8th June for proposals. See https://www.archer2.ac.uk/ecse/ for full details.
Episode 6 of the Code for Thought RSE podcast was released on 13th April 2021. This episode on Research Software Engineering in the Nordic Countries covers a panel session, which included a representative from Imperial’s RSE community, that took place at the first Nordic-RSE get-together online event in early December 2020.
Two blog posts have been published based on the Building Research Software Communities workshop that took place on the 17th/18th March as part of the SORSE event series. The “Building Research Software Communities” post on Imperial’s RSE blog provides a general overview of the workshop and some links to relevant materials. A post by Serah Rono and Toby Hodges “Pondering on the Question of Community Sustainability” details the session on community sustainability that was run at the workshop.
This article about Working in a National Lab vs. Academia, while being US-focused, highlights a number of interesting points, based on the experiences of working as an RSE within academia and in a national lab.
This blog post, “What is really needed for software reusability?”, by a group of authors from the Netherlands eScience Center and Leiden University, highlights the importance of software reuse and the eScience Center’s recent “Reusabilithon” event.
An amazing technological achievement earlier this month: NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succeeds in Historic First Flight
Ever wondered Why Vim Uses hjkl? Or maybe why JavaScript months start from 0?!
KLEE Symbolic Execution Engine
Our Research Software of the Month for April is KLEE. Do you want to automatically explore and analyse paths through a program? KLEE is an open-source framework based on a technique called dynamic symbolic execution, which can be used to automatically explore program paths by modelling them as mathematical constraints whose feasibility is determined using a constraint solver. KLEE has a large user base from both academia and industry and has been applied to numerous software engineering problems such as test generation, bug finding, debugging, program repair, patch testing, side channel analysis and more. You can find out more about KLEE from https://klee.github.io/ and https://srg.doc.ic.ac.uk/files/slides/symex-tarot-18.pdf. You can also attend the next International KLEE Workshop on Symbolic Execution, which will take place online on 10-11 June 2021.
RS Community coffee continues weekly via Teams - normally on Friday afternoons at 3pm but check our Slack workspace for exact times and connection details.
The Imperial RSE Community Slack workspace also features channels for communities of individuals interested in or working with particular tools or topics. If you’re an OpenFOAM user, why not join the #OpenFOAM channel where regular code review sessions are announced (amongst other CFD-related discussions…). Users of the Nextflow workflow tool can find other Imperial Nextflow users in #nextflow. You can find other R developers in #r-users and, of course, there is the #DeepLearners channel for our new AI/ML group highlighted above. Take a look at the other available channels by clicking the “+” next to “Channels” in the Slack app and selecting “Browse channels”. If you want to start your own group around a tool, programming language or topic not currently represented, feel free to create a new channel and advertise it in #general.
See the Research Computing Service’s Research Computing Tips series for a variety of helpful tips for using RCS resources and related tools and services.
Drop us a line with anything you’d like included in the newsletter, ideas about how it could be improved… or even offer to guest-edit a future edition! rse-committee@imperial.ac.uk.
If you’re reading this on the web and would like to receive the next newsletter directly to your inbox then please subscribe to our RSE Community Mailing List here.
This issue of the Research Software Community Newsletter was edited by Jeremy Cohen. All previous newsletters are available in our online archive.