July 2020 Newsletter

University of Sheffield Research Software Engineering Team Newsletter July 2020

Welcome to our new newsletter! The Research Software Engineering Team are passionate about community and training, so we recently had a think about how we get the most out of the resources we currently have for this. Our plan is to run a monthly newsletter, kick off a new series of talks / discussions: “LunchBytes” run online and to provide more information on online training resources. We’ll also be signposting fantastic work and events from outside our team. If you’d like the newsletter delivered to your inbox for maximum convenience, please sign up to our Google Group.

Events

Events and diary dates that might be of interest…

• RSE Society webinar on the new EPSRC RSE Fellowships call. July 7th 2020
• Women in Machine Learning Un-Workshop July 13th 2020 - From Fariba Yousefi (Machine Learning Group): Please join us at WiML un-workshop at ICML 2020. We will have a full day of great invited speakers and break out sessions to maximize interaction between participants. Please fill in the form and check our website for more details. To attend the un-workshop, you need to register for ICML.
• FLAME GPU tutorial at ALIFE July 13 2020 to July 18 2020
• Sheffield GPU Hackathon July 20 2020 to July 29 2020 - Sponsored by NVIDIA, teams from industry and academia work together to accelerate software using GPUs. Sorry - applications for this are now closed.
• LunchBytes August 12 2020 12:00-13:00 Python-themed. Save the date. More information soon.
• Gaussian Process Summer School September 14 2020 to September 17 2020 - Learn about Gaussian Processes with experts from the University of Sheffield and beyond.

Training

• IT Services: Research provides training in a range of research software related areas.
• The Library’s Scholarly Communications Team provides training and support for data management planning.
• Keen to learn R from the comfort of your home? Online R training from the Sheffield Bioinformatics Core may be the answer!
• Twin Karmakharm from the RSE team has put together a list of online training resources, mainly around Python and git.

Opportunities

• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Essential Open Source Software for Science, Cycle 3 August 4 2020 deadline
• EPSRC Research Software Engineer (RSE) Fellowships August 18 2020 deadline
• UKRI Coronavirus Hub - Collaborations between RSEs and academics can be very productive ways of developing epidemiological models.

Web and Blogs

• Research software has been in the news, but it’s not all been positive. Read what the RSE Society has to say about RSEs and coronavirus.
• More bad news about hacked supercomputers! Will Furnass will help you securely access HPC resources.
• Bob Turner has been enjoying using GitHub to remotely collaborate on software projects during lockdown.
• Rob Chisholm was so “inspired” by Bob’s failure to do this well that he wrote a blog post on git rebase!
• If you’re curious about supercomputers, check out this online supercomputing course.

Sheffield RSE Team Services

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

The RSE team provides free Code clinics and paid services allowing us to collaborate longer term.