Hello everyone and welcome to the (slightly delayed!) March edition of our Imperial research software community newsletter. I hope you’ve enjoyed the extended long-weekend Easter break. The delay to the March newsletter provides an opportunity to mention the impressive Artemis II mission that has been making the headlines over recent days. An interesting aspect of the Artemis programme is how it differs from the Apollo missions in the 60s and 70s. In particular, we of course now have access to so much more computing power than Apollo did, with its Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) (and its hand-woven core rope read-only memory!). There are many articles online looking at the differences between the Apollo and Artemis missions and how 50+ years of technological development has affected things. We’ve highlighted a few articles you might like to take a look at in the blog posts section below. There is also still the opportunity to submit abstracts to this year’s STEP-UP RSLondon 2026 community conference - the annual conference for the London and South East research software and technical professionals community. The deadline is approaching rapidly so if you’re interested to have the opportunity to present your work to the community at this upcoming conference, submit your abstracts soon - full details below.
In person registration for the The Software Sustainability Institute’s Collaborations Workshop 2026, taking place in Belfast from the 28th-30th April 2026 is about to close on Wednesday 8th April. However, registration for remote participation should still be available after this date.
The deadline is approaching for submitting abstracts to this year’s STEP-UP RSLondon Conference. STEP-UP RSLondon 2026 will take place on Monday 29th June 2026 at The Francis Crick Institute. Abstract submissions close on Tuesday 14th April 2026. This year the conference is expanding further and we’re again looking for submissions across research software, research data and research computing infrastructure topics. Take a look at the call for submissions for further details.
The first Sustainability Conference for Responsible Research Computing (SC4RC) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, 4th-8th May 2026. Conference regstration closes on Friday 10th April 2026. At the time of writing, there is still the chance to make a late abstract submission.
The RSE Midlands regional research software community are holding their annual conference for 2026 in Nottingham on Monday 20th April. Event registration is open.
Imperial’s Research Computing Showcase Day 2026 will take place on Tuesday 21st April, in-person at Imperial’s South Kensington Campus and online. Registration for in-person attendance is open until Tuesday 14th April.
The programme for this year’s Durham HPC Days 2026 is taking shape. Taking place in Durham, UK from the 15th-19th June 2026, this annual event brings together researchers, developers, and practitioners in the week before ISC HPC 26 to discuss a wide range of HPC-related topics through talks, workshop and tutorial sessions. Registration closes on 20th April 2026.
The call for submissions for RSECon26, the the 10th annual conference for Research Software Engineering, is open. Submissions close on Friday 1st May 2026.
Likewise, the call for proposals for the International Research Software Conference (IRSC26) which is co-located with RSECon in Sheffield, UK, is now open with the same deadline of 1st May 2026.
King’s College London are hosting the UX Day for Higher Education 2026 on Thursday 14th May 2026. This event aims to bring together UX practitioners and strengthen connections across institutions within the UX space. Registration for the event is open and there is also currently a call for contributions. If you’d like to speak at the event or host a longer interactive session, submit your proposal by Sunday 19th April 2026.
Our Research Computing at Imperial and Research Software of the Month features are taking a break this month but we’ll be back with more profiles of our community members and details of interesting software packages and libraries over the coming months.
As highlighted last month, ByteSized RSE has become ByteSized dRTP! Following our first two successful sessions in the series in February and March, our next session will take place on Friday 1st May 2026 looking at AI-assisted coding. Save the date and keep an eye on the ByteSized dRTP page for details of this and other upcoming sessions - registration for the 1st May session will open soon.
The CHARTED dRTP NetworkPlus project has a call open for two of its flexible funds. Fund 2 supports a wide range of community activities that fall within the remit of CHARTED while Fund 4 is focused on supporting professional development. This open call has monthly or bi-monthly deadlines for review of submisisons:
The STEP-UP project’s mentoring programme is looking for mentees. If you, or anyone you know, would be interested in being paired with a mentor as part of this programme, sign up via the mentoring web page.
Another initiative from the STEP-UP project, the STEP-UP Placements scheme, is now looking for expressions of interest to undertake dRTP placements. There’s a wide range of information, including how to apply, on the STEP-UP Placements page.
Following on from our introduction that highlighted the Artemis II mission and the differences that the huge advances in computing technology over the last 50 years have made to space missions, we’re highlighting a few articles here that may be of interest:
Starting with a short article from IFLScience: Apollo 17 Vs. Artemis II: What’s Changed For Astronauts Over The Last 50 Years?
You may also remember that in a previous edition of this newsletter, we highlighted that the code of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer is available on GitHub! This is part of the Virtual AGC Project that provides emulators to run the original AGC software.
One of the big differences over the last 50+ years is, of course, the availability of huge supercomputing power that we have today: From Supercomputers to Wind Tunnels: NASA’s Road to Artemis II
A short blog post from Mike Croucher on NASA’s Artemis II mission and MATLAB
Have you wondered how data is beamed back to earth from the Orion capsule and how we’re able to see high-quality images and video? Take a look at this post on How Artemis II is beaming back stunning video from the moon.
Closer to home, Jyoti Bhogal, one of the Software Sustainability Institute’s international fellows, has written a blog post on her experience of attending Open Data Camp 10 in Edinburgh in September 2025: Time spent unconferencing at ODC10
A post by Joe Wallwork on the Software Sustainability Institute blog looks at “green continuous integration and continuous development practices”.
Members of the German research software community published a position paper in December 2025 highlighting the importance of establishing central research software engineering teams at German institutions.
A recent rOpenSci blog post looks at Software Review in the Era of AI: What We Are Testing at rOpenSci. The post looks at some challenges that the use of LLMs presents in terms of software development and testing structures in the context of rOpenSci.
And finally, returning to our Artemis II theme to finish off this month’s edition of the newsletter - Even Artemis II Astronauts Have Microsoft Outlook Problems!
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:
The Research Computing and Data Science team at Imperial’s Early Career Researcher Institute run workshops in programming, statistics, data science, software engineering, Linux, HPC, AI for programming, LaTeX, and much more, which are available to the Imperial community. Follow the registration information on the RCDS page to sign up.
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 Jeremy Cohen. All previous newsletters are available in our online archive.