A Research Software Engineering Hub for Computational Research
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Computing
Abstract
Computational research is increasingly important in the fields of science, engineering and medicine. Advances in simulation, modelling and data analysis techniques, combined with ever more powerful computing hardware resources, offer a variety of new opportunities to scientists and researchers. However, building and using complex computational science codes continues to be a challenging process. Many computational developers will probably say that developing code to make effective use of modern infrastructure and supporting their end-users who want to run this code on such infrastructure are some of the key difficulties that they face. Building and maintaining a strong base of evolving technical skills and knowledge can help to address such challenges but the sheer volume of different technologies, libraries, tools and applications that developers have to contend with means that being part of a strong and sustainable community of peers can offer valuable support.
This fellowship will undertake a programme of software development, community building and support for computational research to enable and drive the development of a strong community of RSEs at Imperial College London and contribute outputs back into the wider UK RSE community. Working alongside recently established Research Computing Services and emerging RSE support activities and provision currently being developed at Imperial, the fellowship will lead to strong impacts in the way that scientists and researchers make use of software engineering in their research. The work programme will take a "hub and spoke" approach to managing and developing RSE capabilities. A set of core activities, representing the spokes, will feed into a core RSE "hub" that will build a base of RSE knowledge, skills and experience within Imperial College, and feed outputs back to the UK RSE community and RSE Network. This will assist in growing this valuable community resource, attracting new members and gaining a stronger understanding of the real-world benefits that it provides.
The software engineering aspect of the fellowship will be undertaken in collaboration with scientists and researchers in two domains - simulation methods and biomedical research. This programme of software development will build on previous collaborations, applying RSE expertise to address the aforementioned challenges of providing easier access to complex computational codes and processes for end-users, and simplifying deployment of analysis processes to a range of computing infrastructure. The community building aspect of the fellowship will support a range of activities expanding the base of RSE expertise and the community structure at Imperial. Collaboration with regional RSE groups will support the building of a regional community of RSEs with an annual, London-based workshop at its core. The model for setting up and running such a community will be refined and contributed back into the UK RSE community with a view to supporting the development of such regional groups in other geographic areas. Evaluation of the sustainability of software outputs and aspects of the event and seminar programme will be undertaken in collaboration with the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). A further element of the fellowship will be the undertaking of an economic analysis exercise with the aim of gaining an understanding of the costs and benefits of RSE approaches to software development when compared to approaches traditionally followed by research groups. This has the potential for major impact through a much greater understanding of when, where and how RSE is most practical and effective.
It is believed that this fellowship stands to offer transformative, wide-reaching impacts in extending the opportunities available to RSEs and helping to further grow the UK RSE community, in addition to supporting the development of strong, sustainable and successful RSE activities within Imperial College London.
This fellowship will undertake a programme of software development, community building and support for computational research to enable and drive the development of a strong community of RSEs at Imperial College London and contribute outputs back into the wider UK RSE community. Working alongside recently established Research Computing Services and emerging RSE support activities and provision currently being developed at Imperial, the fellowship will lead to strong impacts in the way that scientists and researchers make use of software engineering in their research. The work programme will take a "hub and spoke" approach to managing and developing RSE capabilities. A set of core activities, representing the spokes, will feed into a core RSE "hub" that will build a base of RSE knowledge, skills and experience within Imperial College, and feed outputs back to the UK RSE community and RSE Network. This will assist in growing this valuable community resource, attracting new members and gaining a stronger understanding of the real-world benefits that it provides.
The software engineering aspect of the fellowship will be undertaken in collaboration with scientists and researchers in two domains - simulation methods and biomedical research. This programme of software development will build on previous collaborations, applying RSE expertise to address the aforementioned challenges of providing easier access to complex computational codes and processes for end-users, and simplifying deployment of analysis processes to a range of computing infrastructure. The community building aspect of the fellowship will support a range of activities expanding the base of RSE expertise and the community structure at Imperial. Collaboration with regional RSE groups will support the building of a regional community of RSEs with an annual, London-based workshop at its core. The model for setting up and running such a community will be refined and contributed back into the UK RSE community with a view to supporting the development of such regional groups in other geographic areas. Evaluation of the sustainability of software outputs and aspects of the event and seminar programme will be undertaken in collaboration with the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). A further element of the fellowship will be the undertaking of an economic analysis exercise with the aim of gaining an understanding of the costs and benefits of RSE approaches to software development when compared to approaches traditionally followed by research groups. This has the potential for major impact through a much greater understanding of when, where and how RSE is most practical and effective.
It is believed that this fellowship stands to offer transformative, wide-reaching impacts in extending the opportunities available to RSEs and helping to further grow the UK RSE community, in addition to supporting the development of strong, sustainable and successful RSE activities within Imperial College London.
Planned Impact
The RSE fellowship programme offers substantial scope for providing strong impacts in a series of different domains and benefitting a range of individuals with varying profiles and expertise. These impacts will include a number of technical and societal impacts. Technical impacts will stem from enhanced software development processes and the building of new software and tools that offer improved capabilities, maintainability and sustainability. Technical events, training and networking will also support technical impact from this work. Societal impacts will result from enhanced communities providing new opportunities for RSEs, and benefits that stem from new and improved software, offering substantial improvements in the research outcomes and the impacts that follow from this.
The groups of individuals who stand to benefit from this fellowship include: RSEs; RSE managers; the UK RSE Community and Network; computational science, engineering and medical researchers; users of computational science and engineering codes and processes in research and industry settings; a wider community of software professionals in academia and industry.
RSEs, RSE managers and their teams will benefit from the strong and wide-ranging community building aspects of the fellowship programme. The requirements and opportunities for applying RSE expertise are continuing to grow rapidly and by developing sustainable and active communities around these individuals, they will see benefits in terms of personal and professional development, and in enhancing their skills and expertise in key technical and scientific areas. In particular, the plan to build a regional community in London and the South East will offer a case study of the process of setting up and maintaining such a community. It will also provide a blueprint for setting up these communities in other geographical regions. This information will be contributed back to the UK RSE community and RSE Network with a view to them helping to develop wider impact by supporting the development of regional communities elsewhere in the UK.
The target communities for the software engineering aspect of the fellowship stand to benefit through their codes being made more reliable, maintainable and accessible. Impact in additional communities will be achieved through community engagement, network building and dissemination. This will enable research teams to support larger user communities with the resources currently available to them. The development of tools and user interfaces to offer easier access to complex computational codes for end-users will further help to grow the user base of applications. For example, it will facilitate access by users who would previously have avoided an application because they don't have the necessary technical knowledge to build the application from source code and deploy and work with it, even though they posses the domain knowledge to understand the computations that they want to undertake and how to define them. The release of generic, open-source tooling through platforms like GitHub, or as web-based services, will lead to impact not only within the academic domain but potentially amongst wider groups of users, including in industry.
The economic analysis aspect of the fellowship aims to gather a greater understanding of the costs and benefits of RSE as opposed to traditional software development approaches in research. The outputs from this exercise offer the potential for very substantial impact since in addition to supporting the UK RSE community, they will provide information that may help to stimulate the development of more RSE groups at institutions around the UK. This would ultimately offer self-sustaining impact since the development of more RSE groups will strengthen the UK RSE community as a whole and offer more opportunities for career development and progression for RSEs.
The groups of individuals who stand to benefit from this fellowship include: RSEs; RSE managers; the UK RSE Community and Network; computational science, engineering and medical researchers; users of computational science and engineering codes and processes in research and industry settings; a wider community of software professionals in academia and industry.
RSEs, RSE managers and their teams will benefit from the strong and wide-ranging community building aspects of the fellowship programme. The requirements and opportunities for applying RSE expertise are continuing to grow rapidly and by developing sustainable and active communities around these individuals, they will see benefits in terms of personal and professional development, and in enhancing their skills and expertise in key technical and scientific areas. In particular, the plan to build a regional community in London and the South East will offer a case study of the process of setting up and maintaining such a community. It will also provide a blueprint for setting up these communities in other geographical regions. This information will be contributed back to the UK RSE community and RSE Network with a view to them helping to develop wider impact by supporting the development of regional communities elsewhere in the UK.
The target communities for the software engineering aspect of the fellowship stand to benefit through their codes being made more reliable, maintainable and accessible. Impact in additional communities will be achieved through community engagement, network building and dissemination. This will enable research teams to support larger user communities with the resources currently available to them. The development of tools and user interfaces to offer easier access to complex computational codes for end-users will further help to grow the user base of applications. For example, it will facilitate access by users who would previously have avoided an application because they don't have the necessary technical knowledge to build the application from source code and deploy and work with it, even though they posses the domain knowledge to understand the computations that they want to undertake and how to define them. The release of generic, open-source tooling through platforms like GitHub, or as web-based services, will lead to impact not only within the academic domain but potentially amongst wider groups of users, including in industry.
The economic analysis aspect of the fellowship aims to gather a greater understanding of the costs and benefits of RSE as opposed to traditional software development approaches in research. The outputs from this exercise offer the potential for very substantial impact since in addition to supporting the UK RSE community, they will provide information that may help to stimulate the development of more RSE groups at institutions around the UK. This would ultimately offer self-sustaining impact since the development of more RSE groups will strengthen the UK RSE community as a whole and offer more opportunities for career development and progression for RSEs.
Organisations
- Imperial College London (Fellow, Lead Research Organisation)
- Francis Crick Institute (Collaboration)
- Society of Research Software Engineering (Collaboration)
- QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (Collaboration)
- University College London (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER (Collaboration)
- ST GEORGE'S UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (Collaboration)
- IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- KING'S COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- École Polytechnique (Project Partner)
- Software Sustainability Institute (Project Partner)
People |
ORCID iD |
| Jeremy Cohen (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Chue Hong NP
(2020)
Does Research Software Engineering have a diversity crisis?
Cohen J
(2021)
The Four Pillars of Research Software Engineering
in IEEE Software
Cohen, J.
(2019)
django-drf-filepond documentation
Lamprecht A
(2022)
What Do We (Not) Know About Research Software Engineering?
in Journal of Open Research Software
| Description | This grant is ongoing but there have been key achievements in developing and supporting regional research software communities, developing a model/structure for defining Research Software Engineering (RSE) activities, and in achieving a range of policy, strategy and training-related aims to better understand and support the research software community. - Regional research software communities: A key initial achievement was the set up of the Research Software London (https://rslondon.ac.uk) regional research software community for London and the South East of England. This community is open to anyone building or interested in research software and it aims to develop a sustainable set of activities to support networking, skills development and knowledge exchange for individuals within the region. RSLondon has played a key role in growing interest in, and awareness of, the benefits of regional communities, and in providing a model that can be used as the basis for other regional communities. It was a core part of activities that led to the set up of the Regional Research Software Communities Special Interest Group (SIG) under the Society of Research Software Engineering. - RSLondonSouthEast workshops: The series of RSLondonSouthEast workshops, starting with RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (https://rslondon.ac.uk/rslondonse-2019) which attracted over 100 registrations from more than 20 different institutions, has played a crucial role in building awareness of research software activities within the London and South East of England region. It has helped to build the regional community and showcase the types of work and roles that fit into the research software community. - Building recognition and awareness of RSE: Imperial College's local Research Software Community (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/rse/), which has been partially supported through this award, has continued to provide a variety of events and activites to RSEs and members of the researcher community within Imperial. It has an important role in helping to advocate for the recognition and importance of research software within the institution and the benefits of this represent an important achievement from this award. - Developing models for RSE: Work to build international links within the RSE community and develop a clearer and more structured understanding of how research software engineering activities are provided in different environments has started to show results with the publication of the article "The Four Pillars of Research Software Engineering" in IEEE Software (DOI: 10.1109/MS.2020.2973362). - Training and skills development: During 2020, 2021 and early 2022, where in-person events were not practical, various planned events, and the networking and collaboration opportunities that they would have offered, had to be cancelled or moved online. As time has gone on, this has had a significant impact on the project. However, one aspect that has worked well online is training, and work under this grant has led to a new set of training material being developed covering the Singularity container platform. This lesson material has been adopted into the Carpentries Incubator (https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/singularity-introduction) and been taught alongside a related set of Docker training material as part of an online course on "Reproducible computational environments using containers" which has been run multiple times through 2020, 2021 and early 2022. The course began to be run in person later in 2022. - Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in RSE: Another area where this award is having an impact is diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within the research software community. The award has supported collaborative work resulting in a paper presented at the 2021 SE4Science workshop: "Understanding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Challenges Within the Research Software Community" (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77980-1_30). I was also one of the organisers of the "Missing narratives in discussions around diversity and inclusion in research software engineering" (https://septembrse.github.io/#/event/L1001) panel session held at the SeptembRSE conference in 2021. I am now leading DiveRSE (https://diverse-rse.github.io/), an international talk series focusing on supporting and raising awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion within the research software space. Building on networks developed through other activities carried out under this award, the series is supported by an international group helping to organise and publicise the DiveRSE events. An initial series of talks took place in summer 2022 and a further set of talks will take place in May, June and July 2023. |
| Exploitation Route | Early outputs from the community aspects of this work demonstrated how regional research software communities can develop strong engagement from research software engineers and others who are interested in, or whose work is affected by, the quality and sustainability of research software. Through the development of the Regional Communities Special Interest Group, this work is being taken forward and has already resulted in supporting the setup of at least two further regional research software groups. Software development activites being carried out through a key collaboration within this project are contributing RSE expertise to help make the Nektar++ spectral/hp element software (https://www.nektar.info) easier to install and to work with for scientists and researchers across a range of domains where this software has use cases. The training material developed as part of this award, alongside the running of training courses, especially those with a regional focus, is helping to upskill researchers and software engineers. Where in-person training and workshops haven't been possible, we have trialled different approaches for helping the community to develop new skills and knowledge through online tools and services. This experience is being shared with the wider community to help develop more effective approaches for delvering research software skills via both online and in-person courses. Work to develop structures to describe the way that research software activities are offered and managed within organisations is also developing outputs that will be taken forward in various directions. In particular, it is felt that the structure described in the article "The Four Pillars of Research Software Engineering" represents a key development in the research software domain. It provides a structure that can help organisations without existing RSE activities to think about how they might go about developing RSE capabilities. For organisations with existing RSE activities in place, the structure is helping these organisations to identify where they might grow or enhance their offerings. More generally, the 4 pillars are gaining traction within the community as a means to reference the different aspects that contribute to developing a comprehensive research software offering. Finally, work in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) space is helping to raise awareness of DEI within the research software community. This work has involved engagement with a wide range of communities and is helping to share knowledge, experience and expertise from these areas with members of the research software community. This is an important element in supporting the growth of research software activities in the future. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2020.2973362 |
| Description | Contributed to Docker training material as part of "Reproducible computational environments using containers" courses |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | The Docker element of the "Reproducible computational environments using containers" courses that I have run with a collaborator at EPCC, University of Edinburgh, was originally developed by another academic. We made contact with the original developer of the material and work, led by my EPCC collaborator, was undertaken to extended and updated the material, contributing our modifications to the original training material. In addition to teaching this material at two workshops in 2020 (13th/14th July and 8th/9th December), this lesson was subsequently brought into the Carpentries Incubator and I have been invited to become one of the maintainers of this training material. Update 2022: I continue as a maintainer of this material and have been both involved in and facilitated lesson development sessions during the last two years to further enhance this material and address comments and suggestions from collaborators and others in the community who have taught this material. I have also assisted at further workshops in 2021 and early 2022 where this material has been taught. |
| URL | https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/docker-introduction |
| Description | Contributing to process of developing an institutional response to Science and Technology Committee inquiry on reproducibility and research integrity |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
| Description | Developed Singularity training material to improve reproducibility practices when using High Performance Computing infrastructure |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | This record highlights the development of training material for the Singularity container platform that is helping to train researchers in the use of tooling that supports better reproducibility practices for research outputs. Use of Singularity is one approach to significantly enhancing reproduciblity of research outputs when using High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms for running software as part of a research workflow. The training material has, so far, been delivered to almost 45 trainees, based both within the UK and internationally, during two courses in 2020. Of particular significance has been the inclusion of this training material into the "Carpentries Incubator" (https://carpentries.org/community-lessons/#the-carpentries-incubator) putting it on a path to potentially becoming a full "Carpentries" (https://carpentries.org/) course. Carpentries courses are taught internationally and are widely recognised as providing high quality training for researchers in core technical skills. Inclusion of this material in the Carpentries Incubator offers the scope for the course to be taught widely by trainers in a number of countries and to have substantial impact in helping to improve one aspect of research practices around reproducibility when using HPC platforms. The two online courses "Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity" that included this material ran on 13th/14th July 2020 (https://events.prace-ri.eu/event/962/) and 8th/9th December 2020 (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/201208-containers/) and were advertised through PRACE and ARCHER2 respectively, with the second course also being advertised to members of the RSLondon (https://rslondon.ac.uk) community. As the original developer of this Singularity training material, I am continuing to act as a maintainer for the material now that it has been included within the Caprentries Incubator. Update 2022: The material has been taught a number more times at workshops similar to those highlighted above during 2021 and early 2022. |
| URL | https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/singularity-introduction |
| Description | Director of Research Software Engineering Strategy - Part-time role |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or Improved professional practice |
| Impact | The initial focus in this role is to improve visibility of Research Software Engineering and its importance to modern research across the institution. This will help to improve the sustainability of resarch software and reproducibility of its outputs ultimately leading to potential improvements in research quality. Another area for potential impact relates to discussions with relevant groups at Imperial around career paths for researchers with a software development focus. This is a work in progress but it has already resulted in important discussions that it is hoped will form the basis for improved routes to support these researchers. |
| Description | Prepared report on regional perspectives of RSEs and RSE communities (with two collaborators) |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Implementation circular/rapid advice/letter to e.g. Ministry of Health |
| Description | Proposed and participating in Society of Research Software Engineering's Regional RSE Groups Special Interest Group |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Policy Influence Type | Membership of a guideline committee |
| Impact | This activity has raised the profile of regional research software communities within the national UK RSE community. The SIG launch event (https://septembrse.github.io/#/session/N38) hosted a set of regionally focused breakout discussions which provided the basis for building connections that would support the setup of new regional groups. Subsequent to this event, we have been supporting the setup of different regional groups across the UK. These groups offer opportunities for cross-institutional knowledge exchange and skills development that can help to improve the quality of research software being developed. In turn, this helps to support improvements in the quality of research outputs. Such groups can also help to improve the wellbeing of research software engineers who can often end up working alone for much of their time - providing opportunites to network, chat and exchange ideas with fellow RSEs can be a valuable activity in supporting RSEs. |
| URL | https://society-rse.org/community/regional-groups/ |
| Description | RSE Leaders Strategy Committee |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Participation in a guidance/advisory committee |
| Description | RSLondon Regional Software Carpentry Workshop - December 2021 |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | These workshops deliver a set of core, basic research computing skills to participants. The participants come from a wide range of research domains and many participants will have relatively limited prior research computing knowledge. We see particular interest in attendance from the medical domain but also from researchers in a wide range of domains where computational research is becoming increasingly important. The workshops are of vital importance in providing the necessary basic skills and confidence for participants to be able to be to undertake further learning in their own time. The COVID situation has had a significant effect on regional events making them far less relevant, if everyone is engaging remotely, location is less of an issue. Conversely, it's also less of a barrier, one benefit has been that we've found that these training workshops work particualarly well in an online environment and we can accept larger numbers of participants, at shorter notice, from a wider area without the challenges that we'd face to manage this in an in-person environment. |
| URL | https://rslondon.github.io/2021-12-08-rslondon-python-online/ |
| Description | RSLondon Regional Software Carpentry Workshop - May 2021 |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | These workshops deliver a set of core, basic research computing skills to participants. The participants come from a wide range of research domains and many participants will have relatively limited prior research computing knowledge. We see particular interest in attendance from the medical domain but also from researchers in a wide range of domains where computational research is becoming increasingly important. These workshops are of vital importance in providing the necessary basic skills and confidence for participants to be able to be able to teach themselves further skills as required to support their research. I gave a talk to the montly Carpentries community meeting about the new approaches we were planning for this workshop shortly before the workshop took place. |
| URL | https://rslondon.github.io/2021-05-20-rslondon-python/ |
| Description | RSLondon Regional Software Carpentry Workshop - May 2022 |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | These workshops contribute directly to enhancing the basic level of research software engineering skills within the research community. The workshops attract attendees from a wide ranging set of fields including science, medicine and the humanities. We aim to support up to around 45 learners at these workshops which are free to attend. Improving these skills is of vital importance in supporting the quality and reproducibility of research outputs as software-related tasks represent an ever-increasing element of research work. |
| URL | https://rslondon.github.io/2022-05-09-RSLondon_software_carpentry-online/ |
| Description | Enhancing research software culture through enhanced discovery, re-use and impact of Imperial's world-class research software outputs |
| Amount | £39,980 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2023 |
| End | 07/2023 |
| Description | Excellence Fund for Learning and Teaching Innovation (Imperial College London) |
| Amount | £28,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2022 |
| End | 07/2022 |
| Description | Understanding and Nurturing an Integrated Vision for Education in RSE and HPC (UNIVERSE-HPC) |
| Amount | £506,812 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/W035731/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2022 |
| End | 03/2025 |
| Title | RSEToolkit: The Research Software Engineer's Toolkit |
| Description | The RSEToolkit is an online knowledgebase bringing together a wide variety of materials to support the knowledge and skills development of RSEs and researchers involved with building software. This resource is intended to help RSEs and researchers undertake more effective, better quality research software development and to be able to more easily move between domains by providing a range of "subject guides" to help provide an introduction to working in a new domain. I first envisaged the resource some time ago, creating a repository within my own GitHub account and developing a structure to form the basis of an open community resource that could be contributed to and populated by members of the research and RSE communities. In the run up to the 2nd International RSE Leaders Workshop (https://researchsoftware.org/2020-workshop/agenda.html) at which I was an attendee, I added the RSEToolkit as a proposed working group and gathered a team of 5 people to begin working on this. We moved the resource to a new location in its own GitHub organisation and planned a revised structure and contribution model. We set up a Code of Conduct and contributing guidelines and have had regular meetings since the leaders workshop, working to get the resource to a stage where we can actively promote it and invite community contributions. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | At present, the resource is in its early stage. The team has already been contacted by another group who have RSE training material to look at whether there maybe scope to develop some form of link between our resources. The developer of this material joined one of our meetings to discuss this. More generally, we see extensive scope for impact from this resource within the RSE and general research communities. The open community nature of this resource means that there is scope for anyone to contribute content and we hope that this will help to upskill the community and raise awareness of best practices and key aspects of software quality, reproducibility and maintainability. |
| URL | https://rsetoolkit.github.io/ |
| Title | The four pillars of Research Software Engineering |
| Description | The four pillars of Research Software Engineering (RSE) were defined as a result of discussions between a group of experienced research software leaders as a way to help develop a more structured approach to understanding research software infrastructure at research institutions/organisations. They provide a model that research organisations can map their activties to, helping them to understand how comprehensive their existing research software activities are and where they might look to develop these activities. |
| Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The four pillars have gained some traction within the research software community, with the paper gaining citations, people mentioning the pillars in talks/discussions and even an example of the pillars being mentioned in a job advert (from a third-party not related to the original work), as an illustration of the different activities that research software encompasses. |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2020.2973362 |
| Description | Collaboration with fetal MR imaging team at King's College London |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Department | Department of Perinatal Imaging and Health |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | This collaboration resulted from a networking opportunity made possible through the community activities I have developed as part of the fellowship. Learning about the work of the lead collaborator and colleagues to make advanced fetal MR imaging software available to medical researchers, I observed a significant and potentially high impact opportunity to apply Research Software Engineering skills and approaches to improve access to and use of the team's open source software and pipelines. I have been working with the team to develop a prototype tool, WebMRRecon (see entry under "Software and Technical Products) that showcases the potential of RSE approaches to working with specialist research software. This has allowed me to further my understanding of how researchers in different domains interact with research software and the challenges that they face. It has also provided a demonstration of the huge potential to optimise access to advanced medical imaging software and the benefits this could provide to the medical community. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Discussions with collaborators provided the initial inspiration for this work. They provided a high-level description of existing processes and support for understanding and working with their open source software tools. This enabled me understand where there was scope for applying RSE skills. They also continue to engage with the development process, providing feedback on the developing prototype tool and support for testing. The collaboration has also supported the organisation of a research talk based on the work of collaborators. |
| Impact | This is a multi-disciplinary collaboration covering the domains of Computing/RSE and Fetal MR Imaging. Key output: - An initial prototype of WebMRRecon, a web-based application for running MR image reconstruction pipelines |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Crick Networking Group on AI/ML-based Large-Scale Image Analysis |
| Organisation | Francis Crick Institute |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | I have taken a leading role in helping to form the networking group which received a small amount of funding (held at the Francis Crick Institute) through a proposal submitted to the Crick Partnership Networking Fund to support running events. My assistance in helping to set up the original consortium built directly on (and also contributed to) links developed through setting up and growing the Research Software London community which is one key element of my fellowship programme. Aside from maintaining links with the project lead at Crick and the other partners at Imperial College London, UCL and King's College London, I led the planning, organisation and running of the main workshop funded by the network grant. The community has a strong RSE aspect and this activity enabled me to contribute to the networking group but also to make contacts, raise my profile and have an opportunity to further develop the multi-disciplinary links that are vital to the core aspects of my fellowship. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The lead partner, the Francis Crick Institute, led the proposal development process and held the funds associated with this activity. Partners at Crick, Imperial College London, UCL and King's College London have contributed by attending and speaking at the group's two events and participating in discussions around the network's area of AI/ML-based image analysis. |
| Impact | The key outcome of this activity has been the running of a half-day workshop on AI/ML-based image analysis that had over 100 individuals registered. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Nektar++ software team collaborator |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Department | Department of Aeronautics |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Nektar++ is a high-order spectral/hp element software application used to model a wide range of fluid and air flow problems. The team are one of the key collaborators under my fellowship and I work with them to help address software development issues related to software packaging, web technologies and research software best practices. I also support the project by promoting it at related research software events and responding, where relevant to my expertise, to queries and issues raised on the community mailing list. During the course of my fellowship-related work with the team, I have become one of the Nektar++ "Project Coordinators". |
| Collaborator Contribution | My partners in this work are part of the Nektar++ core development team. They lead the project and a range of research undertaken based on the software. They also lead the wider user community that has developed around the project. |
| Impact | The software continues to develop and improve over time. One of my key contributions has been supporting the Windows user base by resolving various issues to enable parallel processing using the software under Windows. I also provided documentation to support use of this capability. An outcome of my contributions to the software and collaboration with the team has been recognition as a Nektar++ "Project Coordinator". |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | PRISM: Platform for Research in Simulation Methods |
| Organisation | Imperial College London |
| Department | Department of Aeronautics |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The Platform for Research in Simulation Methods (PRISM) is an EPSRC-funded platform with the PI based in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London. The platform represents a number of groups and advanced simulation software packages. As an affiliated member of the platform, I collaborate with the PI and his team, in partcular in the context of the Nektar++ spectral/hp element software. I attend management meetings and workshops organised by PRISM, have contributed material to the website and provide general input, as necessary, from a research software engineering (RSE) perspective. I have made, and continue to make, various contributions to the Nektar++ code, supporting the packaging and deployment aspects and helping to make bug fixes. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The PRISM team have extensive expertise in a variety of advanced simulation methods and their specialist codes that apply these methods to models and structures. I continue to learn new skills from collaborating with the Nektar++ development team while also being able to contribute my RSE expertise into the PRISM platform. |
| Impact | My collaboration with the Nektar++ team within the PRISM platform has led to improved deployment of the software on certain operating system platforms opening up the potential for new users to work with Nektar++. This, in turn, offers scope for these users to undertake work with the software that has the potential to involve a number of domains including various fields of Engineering and also medical use cases. |
| Start Year | 2018 |
| Description | Regional Research Software Communities Special Interest Group |
| Organisation | Society of Research Software Engineering |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | My fellowship activities relating to regional research software communities and, in particular, setting up the UK's first regional research software community - Research Software London - led to me being a founding member of the Regional Research Software Communities Special Interest Group (SIG). This is the first of the Society of Research Software Engineering's Special Interest Groups. Together with a group of collaborators from the research software community, I am working to raise awareness of the benefits and importance of regional communities in the research software space. The group has run sessions at UK-based RSE-related conferences/events with a view to inspiring and supporting the setup of other regional RSE communities around the UK and beyond. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Work within the group has been a collaborative effort to organise and run sessions/activities to promote regional research software groups. As a group who are now involved in various regional research software activities, we contribute our expertise to help support individuals and groups who are keen to set up new communities or grow existing communities. The Society of Research Software Engineering offers the potential of financial support to help new groups with running events or related activities through its Events and Initiatives Grant scheme. |
| Impact | This collaboration has resulted in the startup of at least two new UK regional research software communities. It has also run several events as part of the process of raising awareness of regional research software communities. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | Francis Crick Institute |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | King's College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | Queen Mary University of London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | St George's University of London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Research Software London Community Committee |
| Organisation | University of Westminster |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | A volunteer committee was set up in 2021 to help run the growing Research Software London (RSLondon) community. The members of this committee are based at a number of institutions and these institutions have been listed in the collaborators section above. I lead the RSLondon community and the associated committee and have, in turn, led the organisation of various events and activities through the community. During the pandemic, this has been less practical and the focus has been on running some online training workshops through the community. However, discussions are underway about running further events as in-person activities begin to restart. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators have been actively involved in helping to plan, organise and run a series of online training workshops and to promote community activities to their local groups and contacts. Members of these institutions who are invovled with the community have also helped to organise and run our 2019 and 2020 annual community workshops and a range of other events prior to the setup of the community comittee. |
| Impact | The RSLondon community, with support of its committee has organised and run a number of events for research software engineers and researchers working with or interested in research software. These include: - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity - (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (19th-20th Jan 2022) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (8th-10th Dec 2021) - RSLondon Research Software Drop-in Session (23rd June 2021) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshops - Python and R (20th-27th May 2021) - Reproducible computational environments using containers - Introduction to Docker and Singularity (organised in collaboration with EPCC/ARCHER2/PRACE) (8th-9th Dec 2020) - RSLondon Software Carpentry training workshop - Python (25th-27th Nov 2020) - RSLondonSouthEast 2020 (6th Feb 2020) - The importance and challenges of sharing research software (organised in collaboration with Open Research London) (5th Feb 2020) - Research Software London Software Carpentry training workshop (9th-10th Jul 2019) - RSLondonSouthEast 2019 (7th Feb 2019) Additionally we have organised lunchtime technical talks and similar events/activities but both the demand and practicality of running these in a regional context has been severely affected by the pandemic - such regional events work best in an in-person context. This collaboration is multi-disciplinary - the individuals that have engaged with our activities come from a wide range of different research disciplines. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Title | WebMRRecon |
| Description | WebMRRecon is a prototype web application that is being developed as part of a collaboration with a group of fetal MR imaging researchers at King's College London. The collaboration developed as the result of networking with attendees at an event that I co-organised as part of my fellowship activities (see entry in "Collaborations and Partnerships"). The application provides a web-based interface to a complex processing pipeline of stages based around a set of open source tools (e.g. https://github.com/SVRTK/SVRTK) for restructuring MR scan data into 3D volume representations. Currently interaction with the tools and pipeline was undertaken from the command line via a number of scripts supporting the transfer of data to remote processing resources and then undertaking the processing. WebMRRecon supports running of the end-to-end pipeline directly from a web browser with live feedback of the processing progress. It also offers in-browser 3D visualisation of input and output data to enable checks to be undertaken on data that would otherwise need to be carried out within a separate application. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | At present, the WebMRRecon web application is a prototype and is under ongoing development. However, it offers the potential to make a complex process much more accessible to researchers and clinicians who are not familiar with the low-level computing interaction currently required. While it is recognised that the process of taking this beyond a demonstrator application to something that could be actively used in the real-world would be a time consuming and complex one, initial feedback from potential users who have seen the demonstrator has been very positive. In 2023, this tool is being further developed into a new demonstrator - DicomRecon - that will offer a next-generation web-based tool that can be demonstrated to clinical practitioners and medical imaging researchers with a view to looking at longer term opportunities for real-world deployment and use. |
| URL | https://github.com/imperialcollegelondon/webmrrecon |
| Title | django-drf-filepond: A server implementation for the filepond file upload library |
| Description | django-drf-filepond is a Python software library for the Django web framework to provide a server implementation for the widely-used filepond file upload library (https://github.com/pqina/filepond). It has been built as part of work being undertaken in collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London looking at developing tools to support imaging genomics use cases. The library provides a simple means for a developer using Python Django as their web application back-end platform to adopt the filepond upload library which offers a straightforward means of allowing uploading of files from a web application. Note that this library is currently still under extensive development and is currently considered to be at an alpha release stage. The tool is, however, fully documented and available in packaged form from the PyPi repository used to distribute Python packages. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | django-drf-filepond is, to the best of my knowledge, the first publicly available Django server implementation for the filepond library that provides uploading of files from web applications and it has been linked from the main filepond implementation by the filepond author. The tool has only been available for around two months but statistics available via shields.io badges (https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/django-drf-filepond.svg) suggest that the tool is already receiving over 100 downloads per month. Update, March 2020: This software library has continued to gain users and interest with several contributions via GitHub of issues and fixes. Monthly downloads of the packaged version of the library from the PyPI repository vary but have grown significantly, currently over 700 at the time of writing (via https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/django-drf-filepond.svg), with total downloads now over 20,000 (via https://pepy.tech/project/django-drf-filepond). Update March 2021: The django-drf-filepond has continued to gather interest with various feature requests and a small number of bug reports submitted via the user community on GitHub (https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/django-drf-filepond). I have continued to further develop this tool, adding features, updating documentation and making new releases. Total downloads of the library are now over 37,000 (via https://pepy.tech/project/django-drf-filepond) with monthly downloads of the packaged version of the library on PyPi (via https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/django-drf-filepond.svg) still over 500 per month at the time of writing. Update March 2022: Use of django-drf-filepond continues to grow and I am continuing to develop the library and create new releases. A number of users have raised feature requests and highlighted bugs which have subsequently been resolved. The packaged version of the library available from the PyPi repository (https://pypi.org/project/django-drf-filepond/) has now had more than 97,000 downloads at the time of writing (source: https://pepy.tech/project/django-drf-filepond) with current downloads per month at over 4,500 (source: via https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/django-drf-filepond.svg). Update March 2023: django-drf-filepond continues to gain traction as a tool for supporting file uploads for software developers working with the Django web framework and the filepond web-browser based file upload library. I continue to maintain this code, address feature requests and resolve bugs highlighted by the user community. I made the most recent release of the library (v0.5.0) in December 2022. The packaged version of the library available from the PyPi repository (https://pypi.org/project/django-drf-filepond/) has now had more than 182,000 downloads at the time of writing (source: https://pepy.tech/project/django-drf-filepond) with current downloads per month at over 15,000 (source: via https://img.shields.io/pypi/dm/django-drf-filepond.svg). GitHub has identified more than 450 other GitHub repositories that are using this library as a dependecy (source: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/django-drf-filepond/network/dependents) |
| URL | https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/django-drf-filepond |
| Description | Attendee at SSI Collaborations Workshop 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Attended Collaborations Workshop 2019. As an "unconference"-style event, there were lots of opportunities to participate in and contribute to discussions. I also gave a lightning talk on the London and South East research software community (https://software.ac.uk/cw19/lightning-talks). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://software.ac.uk/cw19 |
| Description | Attending and presenting at NL-RSE19 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Attended and presented at the first Netherlands RSE community workshop (NL-RSE19). Jointly presented a talk, "Strength in Numbers: Growing RSE Capacity at Imperial College London", with Imperial RSE colleague Mark Woodbridge, talking about how we have grown the RSE capacity and activities that we're able to undertake at Imperial College London. We also presented a poster. The talk was accepted following submission and review of an abstract. The event was important in helping to develop links with the NL-RSE community specifically, and the international RSE community, more generally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://nl-rse.org/events/NL-RSE19.html |
| Description | Building effective, sustainable, Research Software communities: Mini workshop at SSI Collaborations Workshop 2018 (CW18) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ran a mini-workshop session at the Software Sustainability Institute Collaborations Workshop 2018 to look at the challenges of building effective, sustainable, research software communities. As session organiser, I gave a short introductory presentation which was followed by a guided discussion with the participants who were all invited to contribute to a shared document during the session. I subsequently wrote up the outputs as a blog post. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2018-06-04-report-cw18-mini-workshop-building-effective-sustainable-... |
| Description | Co-organiser of Imperial College Research Computing Summer School 2019 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I was co-organiser of Imperial College Research Computing Summer School 2019 which took place in September 2019. I assisted by making the connections that led to the two-day "Fundamentals of Machine Learning" workshop session and the "Medical image analysis tutorial" (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/news-and-events/hpc-2019/). I also led the organisation of the afternoon session on the third day, assisting with finding speakers and putting together the schedule. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/news-and-events/hpc-2019/ |
| Description | Co-organising and running four "Reproducible computational environments using containers" workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Organised and ran, alongside a collaborator at EPCC, University of Edinburgh, seven courses on "Reproducible computational environments using containers". Details of the materials produced for these courses are included in other submission entries. For all but one of the courses listed below, I acted as an instructor (for the Singularity material) and a helper, in addition to co-organising the event. Details of the seven 2-day courses are as follows: Online courses: - 13th/14th July 2020 (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/200713-containers/) - 8th/9th December 2020 (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/201208-containers/) - 28th/29th July 2021 (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/210728-containers/) - 19th/20th January 2022 (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220119-containers/). In-person courses: - 20th/21st June 2022, Western General Hospital, University of Edinburgh, UK (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220620-containers/) - 26th/27th July 2022, Imperial College London, UK (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220726-containers/) - 7th/8th December 2022, Newcastle University, UK (https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/221207-containers/) (supported workshop planning/organisation but did not attend in person to instruct/help) Each of the seven courses had between 20 and 30 registrations in addition to a number of views of the recordings of the online sessions which were made available on YouTube after the workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/courses/220119-containers/ |
| Description | DiveRSE seminar series: Supporting Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within the RSE community |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | DiveRSE is a new seminar series that is helping to bring talks and discussions from a community workshop being hosted at the Lorentz Centre in the Netherlands (Vive la différence - research software engineers: https://www.researchsoft.org/events/2022-04/) to the wider International research software community. The series focuses on raising awareness around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within the research software community. I was invited to lead this activity and have been working to build an international committee that can help to make the series a success and promote and engage participants worldwide. We have set up an organising committee and involved a group of additional contacts who can help to promote our events. Across this group we have representatives in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia and we hope to be able to engage a wide range of participants in our upcoming activities during March, April and May 2022. The series launch and keynote take place on 22nd March 2022 - https://diverse-rse.github.io/events/2022-03-22. Since the series has not yet started at the time of writing, there is no impact to report at the present time. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://diverse-rse.github.io/ |
| Description | Diverse RSE: Supporting Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within the Research Software Engineering community |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | DiveRSE is an international online seminar series focusing on supporting Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within the Research Software Engineering community. The series was initially linked to the "Vive la différence - research software engineers" workshop held in April 2022 and I set up the talk series following an invitation from the workshop organisers. The initial set of four talks took place from March-July 2022 with a further set of talks planned for April-July 2023. The series is supported by an international organising committee. Videos and related talk materials are made available via the DiveRSE website which I developed and maintain. A key aim of this series has been to reach attendees as widely as possible across the world, including in regions where research software engineering does not yet have quite the same profile that it has in the regions where the community was originally started. Our initial talk attracted over 100 registrations from 16 different countries. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://diverse-rse.github.io/ |
| Description | Hacktoberfest 2022 event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In collaboration with research software colleagues, organised and ran a research software event as part of the Hacktoberfest 2022 challenge. The event included a tutorial session covering key research software tools, followed by a series of lightning talks from representatives of projects accepting contributions as part of the Hacktoberfest challenge. The event helped to develop skills, build new community links and provided time for working, in a community setting, on writing code to contribute to existing open source projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/hacktoberfest2022/ |
| Description | Imperial College Academic Writing Sessions |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Having found difficulty in organising the time and space to focus on writing due to the wide range of activities that I am involved with through my fellowship, I took the opportunity to attend a few online writing sessions organised by King's College London as part of the "Academic Writing Month" activity that takes place each November. I found these sessions extremely useful and, finding that my home institution doesn't run such an activity, I decided to set one up. With the support of Imperial's Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre, I advertised and found a group of 3 co-organisers and together we set up and run online writing sessions every fortnight on a Thursday morning. Each session provides approximately 2 hours of focused writing time for participants to disconnect from other distractions and write as part of an online community. We follow a process based on the "Pomodoro Technique" (https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique) where we write for 25 minutes and then break for 5 minutes and repeat this for four blocks of writing. At the start of each session, we present a short introduction and participants introduce themselves to each other and say what they'll be working on and what they hope to achieve during the session. At the end of the session, there is a chance to review progress. Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive with several attendees reporting how useful they've found the sessions and planning to attend regularly. We are continuing to run these these sessions in 2023 and from mid-2022, we began to run online and hybrid sessions alternately, giving the option to attend in person. We provide refreshments and snacks which helps to develop the community aspect of the sessions during breaks and both before and after the sessions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/writing-sessions/ |
| Description | Imperial College Research Software Community Newsletter |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The Imperial Research Software Community has been publishing an online newsletter every month since 2019. The newsletter includes a mix of news, upcoming events and deadlines, interesting articles and blog posts and other related material. The newsletters can be accessed online and are also sent out to our community email list each month. As the community lead I have always been involved with these newsletters, including editing monthly newsletters on an occasional basis. Since late 2020 when our previous lead for managing the newsletters moved on to a new role, I have taken on this task, maintaining a rota of community committee members who take it in turns to edit the newsletters each month. I contribute content to support the newsletters and proof read and provide comments on drafts. I also regularly act as an editor. I have also added a new feature where we highlight key members of the research software community across the instution, such as individuals based within the central RSE team, RSE leaders or departmental RSEs. This is helping to raise awareness of research software across the institution. In February 2023, we reached our 50th edition of the newsletter. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020,2021,2022,2023 |
| URL | https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/rs-community-newsletters/ |
| Description | Invited seminar at University of Leeds: Investigating the economics of research software engineering: Costs, benefits and tradeoffs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a School of Computing seminar at University of Leeds:"Investigating the economics of research software engineering: Costs, benefits and trade-offs". This presentation was based on early work in collaboration with my fellowship project partner, Prof. Thierry Rayna, to look at the economics of Research Software Engineering. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://eps.leeds.ac.uk/computing/events/event/5967/investigating-the-economics-of-research-software... |
| Description | Making the Magic Happen: Technical careers helping to supercharge research and innovation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This 1-day online event was organised to highlight the importance of Research Technology Professional (RTP) roles within the research community. With over 100 people registered for the even, it brought together academics, researchers and RTPs from the SES member institutions and beyond. The morning session invovled a set of talks from leading researchers, academics and RTPs highlighting the importance of RTPs from the perspective of those undertaking work supported by RTPs and from RTPs themselves. The afternoon session took a more interactive approach with a set of breakout sessions representing different RTP roles and different instituions which attendees could move between, meet other members of the community and participate in discussions about different aspects of RTP work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/making-the-magic-happen-with-research-data-software-infrastructure-re... |
| Description | Missing narratives in discussions around diversity and inclusion in research software engineering |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This online panel session "Missing narratives in discussions around diversity and inclusion in research software engineering" was run at the online SeptembRSE international research software engineering conference in September 2021. The session aimed to raise awareness of a number of issues within the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) space that are perhaps less widely considered and which we felt the RSE community would benefit from understanding and discussing. This session generated significant interest and engagement and a video of the session has been made available online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpxCWCTSZUc&t=1962s). I was part of the small group that initiated the devlopment of this panel session looking at Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within the Research Software Community. A larger team was then engaged who led the process of setting up the session. I remained involved and contributed throughout this process. The lead organiser ran a process of requesting nominations from across the Research Software Community of people who the community would like to see as pannelists. This worked extremely well and led to a very interesting and successful session that included a wide range of perspectives and discussions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://septembrse.github.io/#/event/L1001 |
| Description | Organised and ran Imperial Research Software Engineering Showcase session |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Organised and ran the Imperial Research Software Engineering Showcase session as part of the Imperial College Research Computing Summer School 2018 in September 2018. The session included a main keynote talk after which I presented some details of RSE activities at Imperial College London. We then had a series of lightning talks, a short discussion session and then presentation of posters (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/rse/events/past-events/). This activity provided a great opportunity to raise awareness of research software activities within Imperial College and to grow our research software community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/news-and-events/hpc-2018/ |
| Description | Organising and running the RSLondonSouthEast 2019 Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The RSLondonSouthEast workshop (https://rslondon.ac.uk/rslondonse-2019) was held on Thursday 7th February 2019 at The Royal Society. The workshop targeted software developers, researchers and anyone building or interested in research software within the London and South East region. It attracted over 100 registrations and 29 abstract submissions for talks and posters and there were representatives from over 20 different institutions. I undertook/co-ordinated the workshop planning and organisation along with an organising committee and a programme committee that I set up to support the workshop. A number of responses to the post-workshop feedback questionnaire were received and all respondents rated the overall workshop experience as 7/10 or higher. The workshop has helped to strengthen and generate further interest in the recently launched RSLondon community and is intended to be an annual event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://rslondon.ac.uk/rslondonse-2019 |
| Description | Organising and running the RSLondonSouthEast 2020 Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The 2nd annual RSLondonSouthEast workshop for RSLondon, the regional research software community for London and the South East of England took place on Thursday 6th February 2020 at the Royal Society. The workshop again attracted almost 100 registrations and included talks and posters from the community based on submitted, reviewed and accepted abstracts, as well as presentations from research funding representatives and industry. In addition to helping to raise awareness of research software work going on around the region, the workshop provided an opportunity to see some industry case studies in one of the keynotes and to hear from funding representatives about their perspectives on and support for RSE activities. All responses to the post-workshop feedback questionnaire gave a score of 7 out 10 or above for their overall workshop experience with the mean score being approximately 8.5. The workshop also included a discussion session which gathered feedback on aspects considered to be of greatest importance in furthering RSE capabilities and activities in 4 particular areas. I am writing up/editing the outputs from this session and these will be published as a blog post in due course. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://rslondon.ac.uk/rslondonse-2020/ |
| Description | Organising and running the RSLondonSouthEast 2022 Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | After a break during the pandemic, this was the first RSLondonSouthEast regional research software community workshop for two and a half years. The workshop was held in person at Imperial College London with approximately 80 RSEs, researchers, academics and postrgraduate students attending. The workshop included a programme of talks, opportunities for discussion and networking and a poster session. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://rslondon.ac.uk/rslse2022/ |
| Description | Organising and running the Research Software London community launch event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Held on Thursday 18th October 2018, this event was the official launch event for the Research Software London (https://rslondon.ac.uk) regional research software community for London and the South East. In order to ensure representation from as wide a range of institutions as possible, the majority of places at the event were allocated by invitation, however, a number of spaces were also open for registration. The event brought together approximately 50 individuals representing around 12 different institutions within the London and South East region. It included talks from EPSRC and the UK Research Software Engineers Association and invitees included individuals with a range of roles from group leaders and senior academics to Research Software Engineering practitioners. The key aim of the event was to publicise the new community, build interest among potential community participants and start to gain an understanding about what the participants would like to see from the community and how it can help them in their research software careers. Feedback from the event was very positive with significant interest being raised in growing a strong community for individuals involved in research software development within the London and South East region. In particular, the plan to run an annual community workshop in February was highlighted and a number of attendees expressed an interest in finding out more information and attending this proposed event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://rslondon.ac.uk/events/rslondon-launch-oct18/ |
| Description | Organising committee member for 9th International Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE6.1) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I was a member of the organising committee for the 9th International Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE6.1) held in conjunction with IEEE e-Science 2018 in October 2018. I was actively involved in helping to plan and run the workshop and also presented a paper and a poster. WSSSPE is an international community that bridges the gap between more research-focused software activities and the RSE community. Being an organising committee member helped me to further develop my international connections and supported subsequent work on a follow-up publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe6-1 |
| Description | Organising team lead/member for RSLondon Regional Software Carpentry training workshops in 2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Ran two regional Software Carpentry training workshops through the RSLondon regional research software community with collaborators at other institutions within the region. 9th-12th May 2022 - Software Carpentry Workshop covering use of the Unix Shell and Git version control and programming in Python (https://rslondon.github.io/2022-05-09-RSLondon_software_carpentry-online/) - I led the organising team and organisation process for this workshop. 28th/29th Nov and 1st/2nd Dec 2022 - Software Carpentry Workshop covering use of the Unix Shell and Git version control and programming in Python (http://rits.github-pages.ucl.ac.uk/2022-11-28-ucl-rslondon/) - I was an organising team member and helper at this workshop. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://rslondon.github.io/2022-05-09-RSLondon_software_carpentry-online/ |
| Description | Organising team member for workshop session at deRSE23 covering teaching/learning RSE skills |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Part of the team who proposed and organised a mini-workshop session on "Teaching and Learning Research Software Engineering" at the deRSE23 conference. This workshop focused on understanding a range of aspects around how research software skills are taught and how learners engage with the process of gaining new skills. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Organising the Building Research Software Communities workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Organised a workshop on community building as part of the SORSE International Series of Online Research Software Events (https://sorse.github.io). This short online workshop attracted an international audience and provided a group of sessions from experts in the process of community building with the research software and scientific research communities. The material covered offered both guidance and concrete training on approaches and methods for understanding and improving engagement in research communities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://researchsoft.github.io/community-ws/ |
| Description | Organising/running RSLondon Regional Software Carpentry training workshop - 25th-27th Nov 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I led the organisation and running of a Software Carpentry workshop with a regional reach, run under the RSLondon (https://rslondon.ac.uk) regional Regional Research Software Community. Co-organisers from UCL and Queen Mary University of London assisted with the process of organising trainers and helpers and managing the registration process. The primary audience of the workshop was researchers but it was also open to postgraduate students. The workshop attendees were taught how to use the GIt version control system and work with the Bash shell as well as receiving two half-day training sessions in the Python programming language. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://rslondon.github.io/2020-11-25-rslondon/ |
| Description | Pannelist in careers panel at Nordic-RSE "Online Get Together" event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I participated as a pannelist in a careers panel discussion at the Nordic RSE Online Get Together event in late 2020 (https://nordic-rse.org/events/2020-online-get-together/). The panel discussion was subsequently edited to form a podcast episode released through the Code for Thought (https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/) podcast series (Season 1, Episode 6, April 13th 2021 - https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/8260314-research-software-engineering-in-the-nordic-countries) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://nordic-rse.org/events/2020-online-get-together/panel/ |
| Description | Participating in the 2nd International RSE Leaders Workshop 2020 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I attended and participated in the 2nd International RSE Leaders Workshop 2020. I proposed and led a working on group on the RSEToolkit. The workshop took place over three half days in September 2020, the 15th/16th September and 30th September. The time period between the second and third half days allowed time to work on activities discussed and planned during days 1 and 2 and then to report back and continue working on these activities and making future plans on day 3. This was an invite-only workshop requiring an application process. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://researchsoftware.org/2020-workshop.html |
| Description | Presentation for the UK Carpentries Community Call - 26th April 2021 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The UK Carpentries Community (https://carpentries.org/community/#carpentries-in-the-uk) has monthly community meetings with a guest speaker. I gave a talk on a series of Regional Software Carpentry Workshops I've been organising and a set of new lesson material I've been involved in developing. The material generated interest within the community and led to extensive discussion about the approaches I've been trialling for running online workshops regional workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sIfwcpkz341c75Adi-7Sbr4mAPEnOabQ/view |
| Description | RSE 2018 Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Attended the 2018 RSE conference. This provided a great opportunity to network with other members of the community, gain a high-level overview of the latest work and activities taking place within the RSE community and to raise my profile as an RSE fellow. I was as a session chair for one of the talk sessions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://rse.ac.uk/conf2018 |
| Description | RSE presentation to AI4Health CDT |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | An inivited presentation to students and affiliates of the AI4Health (https://ai4health.io) CDT based at Imperial College London. Approximately 25 attendees joined the session live and it was recorded to enable other CDT students and affiliates to watch the talk at a later time. The talk "Research Software Engineering: Building Sustainable, Maintainable and Reliable Software for Research" ran for around 50 minutes and was followed by time for questions and discussion. It provided a background to Research Software Engineering, the drivers for it emerging and details of how the RSE community has grown over recent years. The talk then highlighted a series of challenges faced by developers of research software, providing routes to address these and 5 concrete best practices that the attendees could easily apply in their own software development work to help their research. There was a substantial focus on reproducibility and how to help improve this. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | RSEConUK 2019 Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Attended the 2019 UK RSE Conference, co-presenting a poster (accepted via abstract submission) on research software activities at Imperial College London and chairing one of the talk sessions. This conference again provided a valuable opportunity to network with members of the research software community and to raise my profile as an RSE fellow. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://rse.ac.uk/conf2019/ |
| Description | RSdropinUK: Community drop-in sessions for UK researchers and RSEs writing software for research |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | RSdropinUK is a series of technical "drop-in" sessions for members of the UK research software community, or indeed anyone working with or building research software. The sessions aim to provide a place to come and ask technical questions and receive technical advice and support from members of the community. The activity was set up with a collaborator at Northumbria University and a group of helpers from other institutions have joined sessions to answer questions. We have also run a series of short tutorials "An absolute beginners guide to..." within the sessions covering areas such as software version control and use of GtiHub. While engagement with these sessions has so far been low, general feedback suggests that this is a great way to reach out to the wider community, especially to institutions and organisations that don't have a sufficiently large group of research software specialists to support the need for local RSE teams and the associated support that they can provide. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021,2022 |
| URL | https://rsdropin.github.io/RSdropinUK/ |
| Description | ReproHack (Reproducibility Hackathon) Workshop - March 2021 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This reproducibility hackathon (ReproHack) was organised and run with the support of the ReproHack core team (https://www.reprohack.org/). The workshop brought together a set of researchers/PhD students to work on attempting to reproduce the research outputs described in papers with a software/data focus. The papers made available to the participants included those submitted as a result of a call for submissions relating directly to this workshop as well as some papers available in the ReproHack team's existing repository of papers. I found organising and participating in this workshop to be a hugely valuable experience enabling me to see first-hand the extensive challenges of reproducibility. The experience of trying to reproduce the work of others and then relating that to my own experiences of trying to produce reproducible outputs was useful in a way that I couldn't have imagined prior to the workshop. Discussions with other participants suggested some of them found this to be a similarly transformtive experience in their understanding of reproducibility. A series of discussions have resulted from the workshop around possible opportunties to provide better support for reproducibility within the computational research community. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | http://www.imperial.ac.uk/computational-methods/rse/events/reprohack-mar21/ |
| Description | Research Software London Website (https://rslondon.ac.uk) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | To support the new Research Software London community for London and the South East of England that I am setting up as part of this award, I have deployed a website for the community - https://rslondon.ac.uk. The website aims to advertise the community and its activities and generate engagement with developers, researchers, academics and and anyone else involved in building, supporting or working with research software in the London and South East region. The website details the community's aims and lists events run by the community and other related groups. Statistics are not currently available on the number of website visitors so the above estimate of the number of people reached by the site is based on the number of individuals who have engaged with the community and the events run so far. During 2019-2020, the website has undergone content updates and continued to host details of both events run by the community itself and those run by partners or related organisations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020 |
| URL | https://rslondon.ac.uk |
| Description | Research software best practices talk (Computational Oncology group, Imperial College London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Delivered a talk with hands-on tutorial elements to a group of researchers from Computational Oncology group at Imperial. The focus was on research software best practices. Several elements of the material resulted in extensive discussion which proved useful for both the group and for me. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Society of Research Software Engineering - Career Pathways Event |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I was invited to give a short presentation at this event on career pathways for Research Software Engineers organised by the Society of Research Software Engineering. More than 100 people (virtually) attended the online event. The presentations from this event have been made available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FBcIwA57ag) and have received more than 100 views. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://society-rse.org/events/career-pathways-event/ |
| Description | Supporting Software Sustainability Institute Code Camp training workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I supported a Python training workshop being run as part of the Software Sustainability Institute's Code Camp in May 2022. This session was unusual in that it was trialing the use of Gather (https://www.gather.town/) as an environment for online training workshops. I joined the session as a helper and was also involved in preparing a write up of the session and the lessons learnt from running it (https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01927). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/python-for-beginners-tickets-328087056217 |
| Description | Supporting the planning, organisation and running of our first online Software Carpentry workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | With the COVID-19 lockdown having begun shortly before this workshop was due to take place as an in-person event, we made a rapid change to our plans and opted to run this Software Carpentry training workshop as a fully online activity in late March 2020. As our first online Software Carpentry workshop, this necessitated significant planning and re-thinking of the workshop delivery. The primary audience of this training workshop was researchers but it was also open to postgraduate students. I was actively involved in helping with the planning and organisation of making this an online event and prepared a document describing the process of running a Sofware Caprentry workshop online - this included assigning various roles to members of the course delivery team, and the processes for starting and running the session. It also included details of how to handle participant questions and provide remote assistance using the tools available to us. I attended and provided assistance at the workshop sessions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://kmichali.github.io/2020-03-26-Imperial/ |
| Description | Talk at 2019 Nektar++ workshop: Tools to support usability and training for Nektar++ |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The Nektar++ software and it's associated development community forms the basis for one of the core research aspects of my fellowship work programme. This presentation at the 2019 Nektar++ workshop reported on the recent activities that I've been involved with in relation to Nektar++. This work focused on developing tools to enhance ease of access to the software and to improve scope for training in its use. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://www.nektar.info/community/workshops/nektar-workshop-2019/ |
| Description | Talk at UCL Tech Socials: Running Scientific Applications on HPC Infrastructure Using Singularity: A Case Study |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | A talk given as part of UCL's Knowledge Quarter Codes Tech Socials series looking at the use of the Singularity container tool (https://singularity.lbl.gov/) for running scientific applications on clusters. The talk generated interest among the participants and the session format provided time for dicussion and networking following the talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research-it-services/programming-hub/kq-codes-technical-socials |
| Description | Talk at de-RSE 2019: Building research software communities |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Gave a talk on "Building research software communities" at the 1st Conference for Research Software Engineers in Germany (de-RSE2019) (https://de-rse.org/en/conf2019/). In addition to members of the German RSE community, there were representatives from RSE communities in other countries present at the workshop and, beyond the presentation itself and the associated discussions and feedback, attending the event provided a valuable opportunity for developing further international links with RSEs and researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://de-rse.org/en/conf2019/talk/KWUFQW/ |
| Description | Vive la différence - research software engineers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | "Vive la différence - research software engineers" was a hybrid workshop held in March/April 2022 looking at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Research Software Engineering community. The workshop brought together a diverse, international audience to discuss approaches to making DEI a central aspect of the research software community. I was an invited participant at this workshop and attended online. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.researchsoft.org/events/2022-04/ |