September 2024 Newsletter

The University of Sheffield Research Software Engineering Community Newsletter September 2024

Welcome to the September 2024 newsletter for the research software community at The University of Sheffield, featuring news, opportunities, events and training for you.

News

• The Hidden Ref 2024
  • Submissions deadline is close (2024-09-13) but still time to nominate yourself or colleagues.

Events

Upcoming external events

• 2024-09-24 Navigating Challenges in Peer Review: Perspectives from University Presses and Associations
• 2024-09-27 The Turing Way Book Dash November 2024

Research software practice

• Guide to Securing Scientific Software

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

• Getting Started with the RSE Movement within your Organization: A Guide for Individuals

Articles, Blogs, Papers & Podcasts

Articles & Blogs

• Python Virtualenvwrapper
  • RSE Team member Neil Shephard introduces the Virtualenvwrapper and shares a few useful tips to make using it easier.
• Getting Started with Open Research
  • The University of Sheffield Library, in conjunction with RSE and Data Analytics members have produced a new handbook on open research.

Papers

• Twelve quick tips for software design
• Ten simple rules for recognizing data and software contributions in hiring, promotion, and tenure
• Pre-print Prompto: An open source library for asynchronous querying of LLM endpoints

Podcasts

• Code4Thought : Beyond Open Research

Training

The FAIR² for Research Software Training Programme has been developed by the RSE, Data Analytics Service and Library teams and will be launched in October. An introduction to the programme will be given in a LunchBytes session 2024-10-22. Keep an eye on our Training page and join our mailing list to hear about these courses and other events.

Funding Opportunities

• UKRI DRI: digital research infrastructure skills hubs for accelerated compute – UKRI
  • This funding opportunity through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) programme will support the development of two national hubs for digital Research Technology Professionals (RTP). These hubs will enable skills development, education and training for the digital professionals within accelerated and large-scale compute who support science across the entire UKRI remit.
• UKRI DRI: Championing knowledge exchange for UK computational science – UKRI
  • This funding opportunity through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) programme will support the development of one Knowledge Exchange and Communication (KEC) NetworkPlus. The NetworkPlus will co-ordinate and enhance knowledge exchange of computational research. It will set good practice for dissemination of software developments in UK science across the UKRI remit.
• Collaborative Computational Communities: towards new CCPs – UKRI
  • Apply for funding to create a new collaborative community, leading to a viable plan for a new Collaborative Computational Project (CCP) in the future. This funding enables the creation of a published roadmap and follow-on technical scoping activities and a final report. Technical and operational support from the Computational Science Centre for Research Communities (CoSeC) is available at no additional cost.

Jobs

There are two positions within the University of Sheffield currently being advertised.

• Data Technical Lead at University of Sheffield (Closes 26th September 2024)
• Research Software Engineer in AI and Machine Learning at University of Sheffield (Closes 25th September 2024)

Check for advertised RSE and RSE-adjacent roles at the RSE society’s vacancies board.

Community

Digital Research Practice Support Community

The DRPS community is a group for people that support researchers in carrying out research in the digital age. Meetings are held monthly, with discussions around events, training and opportunities related to the field.

You can join the google group here to stay informed.

The next meeting is scheduled for 2pm on Wednesday 18th September 2024.

LunchBytes

LunchBytes are short talks from the research community on research software, data, and infrastructure.

LunchBytes needs YOU

LunchBytes are organised by and for the research software community at The University of Sheffield. If you’d like to curate a session on a topic or present something, get in touch by emailing lunchbytes-organisers-group@sheffield.ac.uk or suggest topics on the jamboard.

Support

Code Clinics

Why not come to a Code Clinic? We’re keen to help you.

Code Clinics are fortnightly supported sessions run by the RSE team and IT Services’ Research IT team. They are open to anyone at TUoS writing code for research to get help with programming problems and general advice on best practices.

At each session, members of the RSE and/or Research IT teams will be available to review code, advise, troubleshoot, and suggest ways to improve your computational workflows.

Research IT HPC Drop In

HPC Drop-In sessions are providing assistance with HPC related user issues such as challenges in scaling an application from desktop to supercomputer. We are considering extending the number of our sessions to two or three weekly. These interactive sessions could provide a better interface with our users than our non-interactive ticketing system. These sessions are advertised on the HPC mailing list.

Research IT Consultations

Alongside the HPC Drop-In sessions, Research IT are also running one to one consultations to solve in depth user specific problems. These consultations can be booked via our webpage. If you are interested please visit the following link: https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services/research.

Sheffield RSE Team

The Sheffield RSE Team aims to collaborate with you to help improve your research software. They can provide dedicated staff to ensure that you can deliver excellent research software engineering on your research projects.

Research IT

Research IT directly supports research, both academic and commercial. We provide large scale HPC systems, advice on everything from statistics to ML to data pipelines and training for both students and staff.

Working with academics, our staff are embedded within research groups on both long and short term engagements.