As we transition into late spring with longer and sunnier days, it is a nice time to reflect on the things happening in our community. In this edition of the newsletter, we share details of the different activities happening in the Research Software Engineering and adjacent communities. Perfect for a sunny little read - give it a go!
Registrations are open for the HPC Best Practices Webinar on Practical Software Citation for Research Software Developers, Maintainers and Users scheduled for Wednesday 4th of June, 11:00 to 12:00 EDT
The next talk in the RSE Seminar Series by the University of Cambridge will focus on Symbolic Regression for Model Discovery in Python and Julia, specifically on PySR, an open-source library that provides a high-performance framework for symbolic regression. It scheduled for Thursday 5th of June 2025, 13:00 to 14:00 BST.
On Thursday 5th of June at 2pm CEST, Sabine Grießbach from Jülich Supercomputing Centre (FZJ) will be speaking at the HiRSE Seminar Series about Leveraging Earth System Science to Exascale: The German National Earth System Modelling Support Team
The Imperial College London Research Software Engineering community is organising the Research Software Conversation Series: Tools and techniques for modern research in different domains from May to July 2025. This monthly series will run in hybrid mode, is free, and is open to anyone interested in research and research software. You can register for the second session, Research Software for Hardware Control and Automation, to be held on Tuesday 17th of June, 13:00 to 14:30 BST.
The 17th International Workshop on Science Gateways (IWSG2025) will take place at the University of Westminster on the 17th-19th June 2025. Registration is now open.
This year’s STEP-UP RSLondon Conference will take place on Monday 7th July at One Birdcage Walk in Westminster. You can find full details on the conference web page. The conference is free to attend - registration is now open and will close on Friday 20th June 2025.
Registration for RSECon25 at University of Warwick, Coventry (9-11th September) is now open for both in-person and hybrid attendance until the 31st of July. This year, the conference has complimentary twin themes: RSE and Research Excellence; RSE as Digital Research Infrastructure.
The 10th Open Data Camp will be held on 27th-28th of September at the University of Edinburgh Business School. They are looking for volunteers, sponsors, and community supporters. If that’s you, email ODCampuk@gmail.com.
This month, in our series highlighting members of the Imperial community helping to support research computing, we hear from Jack Coker:
I’m currently on a 6-month placement with the Research Computing Service, with my work being split between the RSE and Platforms (HPC) teams.
I began my further education at the University of Sussex (in sunny Brighton), where I completed an integrated-master’s degree in physics. During this time, I became interested in the development and application of computational modelling tools. Since I was also interested in low-carbon energy generation, I undertook a couple of internships during my summer breaks, in which I did some modelling work related to nuclear energy (reactor design & waste disposal methods).
After completing my degree, I worked for a year as a software engineer at a company that built precision laser micromachining equipment. It was a relatively small company, with only three of us in the software team, so during this time I was exposed to many different aspects of software engineering (GUIs, backend, hardware integration, etc.).
Although I enjoyed developing software full time, I was also interested in research, and specifically research around technologies that could help mitigate climate change. I therefore decided to undertake a PhD under the supervision of Professor Jenny Nelson at Imperial. My academic work involved developing and applying computational models to better understand organic semiconducting materials. These materials have many interesting and exciting applications, particularly related to the generation and storage of renewable energy. My major focus was on trying to improve our understanding of the relationship between a material’s microstructure (how its component molecules pack together) and its carrier mobility (how quickly electrons and holes move through the material), since mobility is important for determining the efficiency of many semiconductor devices, such as solar cells.
Since my research involved heavy use of Imperial’s HPC clusters, towards the end of my PhD I started to think more about the environmental impacts of scientific computing and computing more broadly. Just around this time, I attended the launch event for ICICLE, a partnership between Imperial, Intel, and Lenovo, focused on the development of more sustainable HPC systems. By a lucky coincidence, it was at this event that I first heard about the RCS placement I’m currently on and so decided to apply!
At this point in the programme, I’ve spent time working with both the RSE and Platforms teams. I’m now in the process of planning out a project which I hope will contribute in a small way to further improving the sustainability of computing here at Imperial.
Are you interested in how you can improve the quality of your research software? Would you like to know more about how you can extend your use of research software best practices? This month, our regular Research Software of the Month feature is again taking a break but instead, in its place, we’re highlighting the Research Computing Service RSE team’s Code Surgeries.
Who’s behind the RSE Code Surgeries?
If you have any challenges or wishes for your research code or your software development skills, the Central RSE Team can probably help you, for free, via the Code Surgeries… but who are the people behind the initiative? We are highlighting the people who will be there supporting your software requirements skills, so you can get a better idea of how we can help you.
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Would you like to see your software tool or application featured in Research Software of the Month? The research software community team are always on the look out for interesting software tools developed at, or with a link to, Imperial. Feel free to reach out to us with your suggestions for RSotM at rse-committee@imperial.ac.uk.
Two full time, fixed term Research Software Engineer roles within the Imperial College London Central RSE team are now accepting applications. Application due date: Thursday 5th of June 2025.
UKRI is developing a new research data policy, which will update and streamline the expectations for sharing and managing research data and other research-relevant digital objects, including algorithms, software code and workflows, arising from UKRI-funded research. Between April and July 2025, they are welcoming stakeholder feedback on a draft version of the UKRI research data policy.
Several members of Imperial’s central RSE team recently attended the Collaborations Workshop 2025 (CW25) online and in-person at the University of Stirling, UK. Read about their experiences of attending CW25 in their latest blog post.
Do you have a collection of related RMarkdown documents that you wish to convert into a book? You can do so in less than hour using Quarto. Read the blog on Writing a book with Quarto to find out how to.
Ever wondered about the changing roles of designers and design in a world where we get new gadgets all the time? Brad Frost, author of a book called Atomic Design talks about the same in the code for thought podcast on Let’s Go Atomic (with Design).
Want to know more about the history and development of Pandoc? In the code for thought podcast Pandoc: a swiss-army knife for documents John MacFarlane and Albert Krewinkel from Pandoc take us through the history and development of this very popular Swiss-army knife for digital documents and document publishing.
Curious to know about the courses on programming from the Advanced Research Computing Centre of the University College of London? Follow their podcast on UCL for Code in Research
The team behind Hidden REF has launched a new podcast called What the REF?!. This podcast aims to discuss and investigate various issues surrounding research culture, recognition for success in research, and all aspects related to the REF. The goal is to encourage more people to engage with the REF as a driver for change in research culture.
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 Imperial RCS User Guide.
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.
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This issue of the Research Software Community Newsletter was edited by Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal. All previous newsletters are available in our online archive.