In the month of October 2025, the Research Software Engineering (RSE) community celebrated its fourth International RSE Day, to recognise and promote the vital role that Research Software Engineers play in advancing research across all disciplines all across the globe. The day is typically celebrated on the second Thursday of October each year. This year, various activities were organised worldwide to highlight the contributions of RSEs to research. The social media campaigns by the various RSE communities across the globe helped raise awareness about the importance of research software engineering in driving scientific progress.
The CaSDaR (Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research) Network+ has announced the launch of a Funding Call, aimed at supporting Data Stewards across the UK research landscape and creating an evidence base for the roles and responsibilities of data stewardship. To promote applications, CaSDaR is hosting an online event to introduce the funding opportunity, on 5th November 2025, 14.00-16.00 GMT (via Zoom). Registration is available here. The event is open to anyone interested in advancing data-driven research practices and in enhancing recognition for data stewards across the UK. CaSDaR invite you to join the webinar, whether you’re planning to apply or simply want to learn more.
A two-day workshop on “Understanding the dRTP Training Landscape” will take place in London on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th November 2025. Hosted at UCL and co-organised by the CHARTED, DisCouRSE and SCALE-UP dRTP NetworkPlus projects, this workshop will look at better understanding existing dRTP roles and training materials, and linking them to skills and competencies. There is also an online attendance option for this event. See the event page for further details and registration.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is inviting applications for new members to join its Strategic Advisory Teams (SATs). Applications close on Friday 7 November 2025.
On Tuesday 11th November, 16:00-18:00, UCL’s Research Programming Technical Social series will host Abhishek Dasgupta, Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Oxford who will talk about Climate aware computing. See the event page for further details and registration. The TechSocial Series are FREE, informal TALKS, DISCUSSION and PIZZA! Open to anyone interested in computational research methods, technology and innovation, this series covers a broad range of tools, programs, digital environments & language.
Registration is now open for the Software Sustainability Institute’s next Research Software Camp, taking place from Monday 10th to Friday 21st November 2025. The programme will feature a series of online live sessions, including interactive workshops and a panel discussion. The Camp will focus on Careers and Skills in Research Software, providing a structured two-week programme designed to support early-career professionals, recent graduates, and individuals seeking to transition into research software roles.
The DisCouRSE Network+ has launched the first round of its Flexible Funding scheme, offering up to £10,000 to support projects that strengthen leadership training and career pathways for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs). The fund will support 10–20 projects beginning between January and April 2026 and lasting up to twelve months. The application due date is Friday 14 November 2025, 16:00 GMT.
There’s lots going on around training this month and we have another event to highlight (and an upcoming training workshop, see below). On Thursday 27th November, 10:30-16:00 GMT, the STEP-UP project will be running an event “Building a comprehensive and coordinated training landscape for dRTPs”. This event will look further at competencies, training materials and work that’s been going on in STEP-UP to identify gaps in training material avialability and provision. Join us for what we hope will be an interesting, insightful and valuable event for members of the dRTP community. Further information and registration.
STEP-UP, in collaboration with the RSLondon community will be running a 3-day Software Carpentry workshop from the Monday 8th - Wedneesday 10th December 2025, covering the Bash shell, git version control and introductory Python prgramming. Please share details of this workshop with any colleagues or team members you think might benefit. Further details and registration are available via the event web page. We are also currently looking for helpers who can join on one or more of the days to support small breakout groups of learners as part of the training sessions. If you’re keen to help, please get in touch.
Call for abstracts is now open for the Sustainability Conference for Responsible Research Computing (SC4RC) 2026, taking place from 4th to 8th May 2026 in CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) and online. The conference aims to facilitate knowledge exchange between data-intensive disciplines, allowing the sharing of best practice, the development of common resources, and the catalysis of new interdisciplinary collaborations. Abstract Abstract submissions close on Friday 27 February 2026. More information can be found on the SC4RC 2026 website.
This month, in our series highlighting members of the Imperial community helping to support research computing, we hear from Hui Ling Wong:
I am a second-year PhD researcher in the Aeronautics department at the Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable Aviation and a 2025 fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute. As part of my fellowship, I am hosting a seminar series on Git for Researchers. Each is a short 15-minute introduction to using Git which presents practical, research‑focused workflows rather than a rote command list. The most recent talk, on commit message, explains how to write them so the git history becomes a tool for debugging and understanding code.
My current research looks at how climate change affects the frequency and intensity of Clear Air Turbulence (CAT). Specifically, to explore how this affects next-generation aircraft design and gust load alleviation systems, as well as whether turbulence is correlated with other atmospheric features, such as the likelihood of contrail formation. To answer these questions, I developed rojak. This problem sits where atmospheric physics meets aerospace engineering: by replacing crude atmospheric assumptions and large safety factors with realistic atmospheric models, we can make design decisions that are both more accurate and potentially more efficient.
Prior to my PhD, I worked in industry as a Software Engineer. During that time, I worked on two UKRI Digital Security by Design projects. The first was on a cybersecurity demonstrator for the e-commerce industrial market. The second was to develop a robust and mature port of the Java programming language (OpenJDK HotSpot Java Virtual Machine) to CHERI hardware (on Arm’s Morello board). The goal of these projects was to bring hardware level memory security into the language, such that all existing Java Virtual Machine languages would be protected!
If you’ve made it this far, you now know my research interests are like an eclectic dependency tree. I enjoy using code to tackle interdisciplinary problems in science, focus on building maintainable software, and love teaching and mentoring — nothing beats the moment something finally clicks for someone I’m helping.
This month, our Research Software of the Month is Unit Static Analyzer from Dr Chris Cave-Ayland, Technical Lead at the Central Research Software Engineering team:
Unit Static Analyzer is an experimental new tool that aims to verify the treatment of units and physical quantities in a Python code base using type annotations. Actions such as adding quantities with incompatible units will be flagged and units are automatically inferred for valid operations. Using static analysis gives early feedback during development and avoids the compatibility drawbacks of some runtime libraries for handling units. The tool is fully compatible with libraries such as NumPy and has no runtime overhead. The tool is in very early development so any feedback or interest appreciated.
A recent blog post by the Software Sustainability Institute community compiles a list of 5 strategies to help foster cross-disciplinary activity in skill-sharing communities. The post discusses the importance of creating an inclusive environment that encourages participation from individuals with diverse backgrounds and expertise.
In the code for thought podcast episode “Let Benchmarking Commence… the HPC RSE workshop at ISC 2025 in Hamburg”, the organisers of ISC 2025, Rene Caspart and Robert Speck, tell us how it all went, while keynote speakers Michele Mesiti and Jayesh Badwaik give us concrete examples of how they go about continuous benchmarking - and why.
In the podcast “Unleashing digital skills in research”, Phil Reed from the University of Manchester and SSI fellow, talks about how to boost digital skills for people outside the research software domain, like librarians.
“Sounds from outer space - the Voyager Programme” is a code for thought podcast episode with guest Bill Kurth, about a space exploration of a special kind: the Voyager probes. Launched in 1977 just a few weeks apart they have now reached interstellar space. Some of the data they send back to Earth are audio - which can tell us a lot about the outer planets like Jupiter or indeed interstellar space, where both Voyagers are now.
In their interesting, and recently updated, preprint article, Richard Littauer et al. provide “10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job”!
Do you use the code completion features in GitHub Copilot to help you when writing code? Ever wondered about the models that power this funciontality? Take a look at GitHub’s recent blog post “The road to better completions: Building a faster, smarter GitHub Copilot with a new custom model” to find out more!
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.