October 2021 Newsletter

University of Sheffield Research Software Engineering Team Newsletter October 2021

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the monthly newsletter from the Research Software Engineering Team at The University of Sheffield.

Opportunities

• Software Sunstainability Institute Fellowship 2022. These Fellowships are a great opportunity for RSEs and Academics alike to receive funding and support for projects that promote software sustainability in research. The University of Sheffield has had representiatives in SSI cohorts for a few years. This round will also be a pilot for opening up the programme to international applicants. The deadline to apply is 31 October 2021.

• UKRI: Support the development of research software engineering. Funding from the UKRI is available for activities to support the development of research software engineering in the UK. The closing Dateis 2nd of Dec 2021 You must be either:
  • a researcher or research software engineer at an eligible research organisation
  • an employee of an eligible public sector research establishment.
• Research Software Engineer. An opening is available to join the growing research software engineering team on an open-ended contract. Ideally you will have a PhD level education with experiments in data analytics, numerical computing and high-performance computing. The closing date is 22nd of October 2021.

LunchBytes

We had two highly successfull LunchBytes sessions in September and October!

• LunchBytes × SeptembRSE Special: Python Virtual Environment Showdown (15th Sep 2021) To coincide with this year’s online RSE conference, SeptembRSE, LunchBytes “colocated” on Zoom as part of the conference programme.

  The topic was a showdown between some of the different options for managing virtual environments when working with Python. Will Conda come out on top? Or will the favourite be venv or Poetry?

  More details about the event, including a video of the session can be found on our blog.

• LunchBytes: Better MATLAB, Better Research (13th October 2021) Short talks on how University of Sheffield researchers are using Matlab features old and new, straightforward and complex. A chance to get perspectives from researchers and from MathWorks, and to discuss Matlab in the research software ecosystem.

  More details about the event, including a video of the session can be found on our blog.

News

• On the 14th September 2021, at an online event, the University of Sheffield Library announced the winners of the inaugural Open Research Prize, supporting the University of Sheffield’s Open Research Statement. Find out more about the prize and winners!.
• On the 6th of August, the Science Minister announced UKRI’s open access policy. See also details of the policy and UKRI Open Research Resources.
• Hacktoberfest! Although the team haven’t organised specific sessions for Hacktoberfest hacking this year, we did kick off the month with a free workshop on GIT & GITHUB THROUGH GITKRAKEN - FROM ZERO TO HERO!. The materials are openly available and include an introduction to version control and collaborating on GitHub. So don’t forget to sign up for Hacktoberfest and make 4 valid pull request to particpating projects to get an awesome hacktoberfest t-shirt! Sign up and check out rules on the Hacktoberfest website.
• RSdropinUK: An exciting new service of free Research software technical drop-in sessions for researchers and Research Software Engineers based at organisations in the UK has been launched by members of the RSE community! Each fornightly drop-in session will also include an informal tutorial/walkthrough of a research software engineering tool, aimed at absolute beginners. Check out their website for details of the types of problems they can help with and information on how to join the sessions. And don’t forget, your friendly local Sheffield RSE team, in collaboration with IT Services, also offer similar code clinic sessions.
• ReproHack Hub Launch: Join the ReproHack Core Team, in collaboration with the N8 CIR on the 18th November 2021 in the inaugural event using their brand sparkling new ReproHack Hub! ReproHack events are sandbox environments for practicing research reproducibility where participants attempt to reproduce published research of their choice from a list of proposed papers with publicly available associated code and data. There are two ways to get involved:
  • As an author: Submit your paper for reproduction and review!
  • As a participant: Join on us on this celebratory day and get practical experience in reproducibility with real published materials!
• Matlab 2021b is now out (see Release Highlights) which includes enhanced python support.
• How augmented clinical trials are accelerating a vaccine for tuberculosis: Press release about exciting work using the latest techniques in mathematical modelling and augmented clinical trials to help researchers develop an affordable vaccine which has benefited by Sheffield RSE support.

Talks

• On 10th September, our own Bob Turner presented the results of the University of Sheffield Research Software Survey (2020) at SeptembRSE. More details about the talk, including a video of the session can be found on our blog.
• On the 25th September, our own Anna Krystalli participated on a panel entitled Engaging the community in research reproduction at Metascience 2021 Conference. A video of the session can be found on the Centre for Open Science’s YouTube channel.

Training

• There’s a bunch of upcoming free training courses from the Hartree Centre including:

  • Introduction to data collection and preparation

    21 Oct 2021 – FULLY BOOKED

  • Data analysis and systems integration

    22 Oct 2021 – FULLY BOOKED

  • Beginner’s Guide to Cloud for Industry

    2 Nov 2021 : https://www.cvent.com/c/express/e200899b-0a57-435a-9c3f-2e88e22bdcf2

  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in the Cloud

    3 Nov 2021 : https://www.cvent.com/c/express/b373a50e-ba6c-4245-aae0-4f561847bff6

  • Building and testing apps for the Cloud

    10-11 Nov 2021 : https://www.cvent.com/c/express/20ece454-1faf-467d-b654-4bfc1c69377f

  • Mixed language programming – From Python to C

    9 Dec 2021 : https://www.cvent.com/c/express/1e0034b8-643f-4862-a8a3-3db7575cd88d

  For more details on the courses, check out their Accessible supercomputing​, data analytics and AI training with industry context page.

• Matlab Academy is an online resource for learning MATLAB for free with MATLAB Onramp and accessing interactive self-paced online courses and tutorials on Deep Learning, Machine Learning and more: https://matlabacademy.mathworks.com/. As an example, a new course on Matlab academy demonstrates how to simulate electronic circuits.
• Performance analysis methodology workshop | 15 Dec 2021 09:00-12:00. This workshop aims to give a solid understanding of the basics of performance analysis for research and simulation codes, using high- and low-level metrics. https://www.dur.ac.uk/arc/training/workshop/

RSE Sheffield

The RSE Sheffield 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 Sheffield team provides free Code Clinics (in collaboration with IT Services), plus paid services that allow us to collaborate longer term.