November 2026 Newsletter

The University of Sheffield Research Software Engineering Community Newsletter November 2026

Welcome to the November 2026 newsletter for the research software community at The University of Sheffield, featuring news, opportunities, events and training for you.

Upcoming Events in Sheffield

• Workshop: AI-powered tools for Research Data Stewardship
  • Dates: 24 November 2026
  • Where: Sheffield
• The international Machine Learning for Microscopy Hackathon
  • Dates: 15-17 December 2026
  • Where: University of Sheffield (Other UK Universities are also hosting including Ulster, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford)

Upcoming External Events

• Fortran testing workshop
  • Dates: 11 November 2026
  • Where:: York
• TRE Communities Conference Come, network with your peers and get involved in exciting discussions on some of the most important topics in TRE development
  • Dates: 16-18 November 2026
  • Where: Edinburgh
• Celebrating 70 years of Fortran event In addition to the afternoon workshop, there will be small community meetings in the morning and an evening drinks reception. You can also submit lightning talks and/or posters via the registration form until 6th November.
  • Date: 1 December 2026
  • Where: Science and Industry Museum, Manchester
• Computing Insight UK (CIUK), brings together people from across the computational science and research software communities.
  • Dates: 2-4 December 2026
  • Where: Manchester Central
• The Research Software Alliance has a Webinar Series: Research software in the age of Generative AI consisting of the following events.
  • AI Guidance for Research Software Engineering Team Leaders
    • Date: 10 November 2026 15:00–16:00 CET / 14:00–15:00 UTC
  • When Green Does Not Mean Right: Specifying, Verifying, and Scaling Evaluation of AI-Assisted Research Software

    • Date: 30 November 2026

      15:00–16:00 UTC

  • Understanding Future Incentives Around Publishing, Preserving, and Crediting Software
    • Date: TBC

Articles, Blogs, Papers, Surveys & Podcasts

Articles, Blogs and Videos

• AI Coding Agents Write 30% More Code – and Resolve Zero Additional Issues, Harvard Study Finds
• Trustworthiness assessment tools must be trustworthy
• Integrating Security and Ethics into AI-Driven Research Software
• Videos of openFest 2026
• Is Python the favorite language of LLMs?
• Coding Alone
• A couple of RSECon26 videos 10 Years of RSECon & Why attend RSECon
• Automatic computational reproducibility checks with Metacheck

Papers

• AI-Assisted Software Development Policy for UCL Advanced Research Computing
• Monitoring data sharing and FAIR practices with LLMs: a synthesis of expert views
• PhD students who write dissertations with AI less likely to stay in academia
• Sustainable high performance computing in the UK: a position paper on public investment, accountability, and the path to net zero

Pre-Prints

• No Job Search is the Same
• Cognitive Debt in the GenAI Era - Listening to Practitioners’ Voices on the Loss of Understanding
• AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance
• Do Coding Agents Catch Their Own Bugs? (They Don’t.)

Funding Opportunities

• catalyst-fund Supporting the practices that make AI-assisted research software trustworthy.
  • Award: up to $50,000
  • Duration: 3–6 months
  • Deadline: 31st of December 2026
  • Eligibility: Worldwide
• UKRI Enabling AI adoption across science and engineering Apply for funding for ambitious and exploratory projects bringing together AI and domain expertise. Projects will have the potential to unlock new opportunities for applying artificial intelligence (AI) to important research challenges in priority science and engineering disciplines.
  • Award: up to £250,000
  • Duration: No more than 1 year with a fixed start date of 26 April 2027
  • Deadline: 1 December 2026
• DisCouRSE Flexible Fund - Round 3
  • Award: Up to 4 Pilot Projects up to £15,000 100 full economic cost. At least 3 growth projects up to £50,000 at 100% full economic cost.
  • Duration: Pilot projects must be at most 1 year in duration. Growth projects can run until the end of September 2028. Projects should start between 01/03/2027 and 01/05/2027.
  • Deadline: 16:00 GMT, 11 December 2026
  • Informative Webinar: 14:00 BST, 15 October 2026
• DRI Knowledge Exchange Fellowships
  • Deadline: 12 November 2026
  • Eligibility: Applicamts must be from UK institutions which are eligible for UKRI funding.
• N8 Summer internships. Propose a project for the N8 CIR Summer 2027 Internship Programme
  • Deadline: 4th January 2027

Training Opportunties

• This semester the FAIR^2 for research software Training Programme will be delivered again. The following events are already scheduled and details of other modules can be found on myDevelopment.
  • Better Software for Better research - Introduction to the FAIR^2 for research software training program (Online); Dates: 13-13:45, 16 November 2026
  • Software design (in person); Dates: 1300-16:00, 23 November 2026 and 30 November 2026
• DisCouRSE launches free leadership programme for dRTPs
  • Deadline to apply: 8 November 2026

Jobs

• Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering within the School of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield
• Chair in Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies
• Senior Lecturer in Visual Computing and Multimodal Intelligence

Other opportunities

• Introducing HPC Champions: Performance Analysis. Join the first cohort of dRTPs building expertise in performance analysis. Travel and accommodation are funded for the VI-HPS workshop in Durham.

Community

Digital Research Practice Support Community

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

You can join the google group here to stay informed.

The next meeting is scheduled for 2pm on Wednesday 11th November 2026.

Support

Code Clinics

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

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

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

Research IT HPC Drop In

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

Research IT Consultations

Alongside the HPC Drop-In sessions, Research IT are also running one to one consultations to solve in depth user specific problems. These consultations can be booked via our webpage.

Sheffield RSE Team

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

Research IT

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

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