Welcome to the August 2026 newsletter for the research software community at The University of Sheffield, featuring news, opportunities, events and training for you.
National AI in Research Survey - The UK Metascience Unit has launched the National AI in Research Survey, which will help us understand the use of AI in research. We want to hear from researchers across all disciplines and career stages on: How AI is currently being used in your research; What enables or hinders your use of AI; How policy can best support responsible and effective use in the future. The results of this survey will be published and used to inform national policy on AI in research.
Pilot study trialling the use of open source software - The University of Sheffield’s Open Research Working Group is running a short study to understand the positives and negatives experienced when using an open source software alternative to a conventionally used text editing app such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Open source software is freely available to use, share, modify and distribute, and operates under a different licensing and development model to commonly used proprietary software such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
The DRPS community is a group for people that support researchers in carrying out research in the digital age. Meetings are held monthly, with discussions around events, training and opportunities related to the field.
You can join the google group here to stay informed.
The next meeting is scheduled for 2pm on Wednesday 16th September 2026.
Why not come to a Code Clinic? We’re keen to help you.
Code Clinics are fortnightly supported sessions run by the RSE team and IT Services’ Research IT team. They are open to anyone at TUoS writing code for research to get help with programming problems and general advice on best practices.
At each session, members of the RSE and/or Research IT teams will be available to review code, advise, troubleshoot, and suggest ways to improve your computational workflows.
HPC Drop-In sessions are providing assistance with HPC related user issues such as challenges in scaling an application from desktop to supercomputer. We are considering extending the number of our sessions to two or three weekly. These interactive sessions could provide a better interface with our users than our non-interactive ticketing system. These sessions are advertised on the HPC mailing list.
Alongside the HPC Drop-In sessions, Research IT are also running one to one consultations to solve in depth user specific problems. These consultations can be booked via our webpage. If you are interested please visit the following link: https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services/research.
The Sheffield RSE Team aims to collaborate with you to help improve your research software. They can provide dedicated staff to ensure that you can deliver excellent research software engineering on your research projects.
Research IT directly supports research, both academic and commercial. We provide large scale HPC systems, advice on everything from statistics to ML to data pipelines and training for both students and staff.
Working with academics, our staff are embedded within research groups on both long and short term engagements.
For queries relating to collaborating with the RSE team on projects: rse@sheffield.ac.uk
Information and access to Bede.
Join our mailing list so as to be notified when we advertise talks and workshops by subscribing to this Google Group.
Queries regarding free research computing support/guidance should be raised via our Code clinic or directed to the University IT helpdesk.
List of archived pages: Archive.