The holidays and the end of another year are almost upon us! 2023 has been an interesting year for the Imperial Research Software Community and our related projects and activities. While our main source of funding ended in the summer of this year, which has made running community events a little more challenging, we have been keeping in touch via this monthly newsletter and our Slack workspace. We were also able to run our end-of-year festive get-together earlier this week. It was great to see some of our members joining us in person to hear talks from two excellent speakers and join us for food and a chance to chat.
Earlier in 2023, we were involved in running Imperial’s first “Research Software Champions” programme, supported via the College through Research England research culture funding. This scheme brought together an enthusiastic group of 14 Champions from departments across the College who undertook a variety of activities to raise awareness of good “research software culture”, highlighting the importance of core skills and best practices. The scheme was very successful and I’m pleased to say we’re now looking for another cohort of Champions for 2024 so, if you’re a PhD student, look out for more information in the “News” section below! This project also supported the development of a new Research Software Directory for Imperial - this will be made publicly available in the coming weeks and is a great place to be able to showcase your software to the Imperial community and the wider world!
In July, a number of members of the community joined us for the 1-day Research Software London annual workshop which attracted around 80 attendees from across the London and South East region. RSLondonSouthEast 2023 was held at Imperial’s South Kensington Campus and offered a programme of talks, alongside posters and opportunities for networking and discussion.
Looking ahead to 2024, we’ll be aiming to expand our committee enabling us to better share the workload of managing our activities, and we’ll be looking to offer more events and opportunities for training in core research computing skills. If you’d like to be part of this and help us to grow and develop the community, get in touch!
Wishing you all the best for the holiday season and the new year and a good break.
Are you an Imperial PhD student? If you are, the deadline to apply to join our 2nd cohort of Imperial Research Software Champions is Thursday 18th January 2024. You can find further information in the news section below and apply here.
The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) are running a webinar on Thursday 18th January, 1pm-3pm on “Nurturing change through growing UKRN projects”, looking at approaches for making a positive change in research culture.
The Cloud-SPAN project are running a course on data management and analytical skills for genomics research over 4 sessions in January 2024 (15th, 17th, 22nd & 24th).
The ARCHER2 training team are running a two-day online course Introduction to Data Science & Machine Learning on 30th-31st January 2024.
EURO-PAR 2024, the 30th International European Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing takes place in Madrid, 26th-30th August 2024. The deadline for abstract submissions is 5th March 2024, with the submission of full papers required just under three weeks later.
The German RSE community (deRSE) annual conference takes place 5th-7th March 2024 in Würzburg, Germany. Registration for deRSE24 is now open.
And a few reminders of events we highlighted last month…
The ARCHER2 Celebration of Science event will take place in Edinburgh on 7th-8th March 2024. Registration is required but there is no fee to attend. There is also a Call for Posters for this event, for which the submission deadline is Tuesday 23rd January 2024.
FOSDEM is an open source developer community event held in Brussels that has been running since 2000. The event is free and more than 5,000 developers attend. The 2024 event takes place on the 3rd and 4th February 2024. As highlighted on the FOSDEM website, this is a great opportunity to “…meet, share ideas and collaborate…You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in!”.
The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) has announced that Collaborations Workshop 2024 (CW24) will be held as a hybrid event from Tuesday 30th April to Thursday 2nd May 2024. If you’d like to receive updates about the event, you can subscribe to the CW24 newsletter.
This month, in our series highlighting key members of the College community helping to support research computing and research software services, we hear from Dr Stefano Galvan. Based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stefano has been a longstanding member of our community committee and he has played a key role in helping to sustain and support our community over a number of years:
I view my journey in software design, implementation, computing hardware, and ICT as an ongoing development. It all started when I was 12, writing my first original program in BASIC for the Commodore 64. Fast forward to today, and I find myself employed as a Senior Research Software Engineer in the Mechanical Engineering department, where software is both my passion and my work, shaping every decision in my career.
After earning my Ph.D. in Computer Science, I spent a few years in industry, first as an ICT manager and later refining my skills as a Linux kernel hacker for embedded systems. Upon returning to academia, I collaborated with various groups in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, contributing to two large-scale EU projects on robotic neuro-surgery. I designed and developed code mainly in C++, Python, MATLAB, and used ROS, the robotic operating system, a communication framework for distributed systems. Linux is my go-to system, and I’m always happy to help those using it or transitioning from other operating systems.
In case you are wondering, there’s a lot of code development in Mechanical Engineering, from simple prototypes to full-fledged commercial products. My role involves assisting researchers at every stage of software production, from design to implementation, and from usability to maintainability. I aim to shape the approach towards software, considering it not just as a tool but as a proper form of research output. I’m also trying to convey the message that, given the resources invested in producing good code, it should be preserved for the benefit of future generations of researchers. And that requires good documentation, proper versioning and, in some cases, an easy-to-use user interface.
I’m always up for a chat about software, so feel free to reach out to me via email or on Teams.
We don’t have any Research Software of the Month for you this month, however, we’d instead like to highlight that there’s still time to get coding as part of “Advent of Code 2023”!
Even if you’re not participating competitively, AoC provides a great way to test and improve your coding and problem solving skills and algorithmic knowledge. It’s also a perfect opportunity to get started with a new language and quickly learn the core features and API.
Ever thought about learning Rust? Go? Scala? Or maybe something more traditional - C++? FORTRAN? Or, simply use your favourite language at the moment to work through the puzzles!
Call for 2nd cohort of Imperial Research Software Champions: We are delighted to announce that we have received support through a new project funded, via Imperial, by Research England research culture funds, to run another cohort of our Research Software Champions scheme. We’re looking for a group of around 12 PhD students from a wide range of departments to participate in this scheme. Champions will work within their Imperial department to promote awareness and recognition of the importance of good quality software in modern research. For more information and to apply to participate in this programme, see the application form. (Previous Champions are welcome to apply again to continue your work from earlier in 2023).
There are currently two job opportunities open in Earth Science and Engineering:
These posts are related to a project funded by the College for 2 years working on the use of digital methods including AI to support students’ skills development associated with Computational Thinking.
Whether or not you undertake research as part of your role, you may well be aware of the huge importance of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise to academic institutions and academics/researchers (and the vast amount of work required in preparing for making a REF submission). Following the last REF exercise in 2021 the next REF was expected in 2028, however, it was recently announced that the next REF is to be delayed until 2029.
The Next Generation of RSEs: Emma Simpson from the University of Manchester’s RSE team highlights her role as a host for 3 college students, introducing them to the RSE role, as part of the In2science programme.
In the second part of Code for Thought’s Diversity in Tech podcast, Peter Schmidt has spoken to Mariann Hardey of the University of Durham, UK on the “Culture of Women in Tech”. Continuing the “byte-sized” series of short technical training podcasts, this month’s episode looks at “Web Development with Django”, the companion podcast to Tuesday 5th December’s online byte-sized RSE session. And finally, another Code for Thought episode to highlight, with Peter chatting to Ghislain Vaillant about “Being a Research Software Engineer in France”.
Do you code in C++? Take a look at this article describing “Binding a C++ Library to 10 Programming Languages”.
You may have been told that you should absolutely not add your software dependencies into your version control repository. This makes perfect sense, after all, if they’re stored in a package repository somewhere and can be easily installed via a package manager, why duplicate everything slowing down the time taken to clone your repository and increasing the bandwidth used? Take a look at this article which provides a different perspective: Dependencies Belong in Version Control.
Say Goodbye to Docker Volumes highlights the new docker-compose watch command that simplifies the development cycle when youre working with Docker containers. This new feature synchronises the code locally on your system with the code inside your container.
Does Microsoft OneDrive export large ZIP files that are corrupt?: An interesting investigation into a problem with extracting very large ZIP files exported from OneDrive. If you ever have cause to work with ZIP files that are > 4 Gigabytes in size, (or if you just like low-level details of file formats!), this blog post is worth reading.
The Imperial Research Software Community Slack workspace is a place for general community discussion as well as featuring channels for individuals interested in 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 there is the #DeepLearners channel for AI/ML-related questions and discussion. 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.
If you need support with your code, seek no more! The Central RSE Team, within the Research Computing Service is here to help. Have a look at the variety of ways the team can work with you:
All the documentation, tutorials and howtos for using Imperial’s HPC are available in the HPC Wiki pages. See also the Research Computing Service’s Research Computing Tips series for a variety of helpful tips for using RCS resources and related tools and services.
Imperial’s Research Software Directory provides details of a range of research software and tools developed by groups and individuals at the College. If you’d like to see your software included in the directory, you can open a pull request in the GitHub repository or get in touch with the Research Software Community Committee.
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 Research Software Community Mailing List.
This issue of the Research Software Community Newsletter was edited by Jeremy Cohen. All previous newsletters are available in our online archive.