Simon Hettrick
Professor Simon Hettrick is Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, and a Director of the Southampton Research Software Group.
Software in research
& Research Software Engineers
By Simon Hettrick
21 November 2019 - Ordnance Survey @sjh5000 ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195
How it used to be
In the beginning...
Vive la révolution!
Zeitgeists!
It's not just the zeitgeists...
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
Use
software
Fundamental to
results
Develop own code
69%
92%
56%
Percentage of cross-council funding in software-reliant research
Software in publications
65%
31 UK institutions ~ 600k papers
Software is vital to research
...but nobody was talking about it
Who writes the software?
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
No career path for software developers
Online courses and books
Attended a course
No training
29%
46%
50%
25%
0%
25%
"Professional"
"Beginner"
Research
Software
Engineering
Researcher
Software
Engineer
Researcher
developer
Research
Software
Engineer
The Software
Sustainability Institute
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
Better software
Better research
These slides: http://bit.ly/32WOdYA
"Oh come on! How big can this Goliath guy be?"
Academics
Unimportant people
in academia
Important people
in academia
The Venn of academic importance
Everyone else
in the entire
world
Software
Training
Community
Policy
Providing expertise
Growing a training community
Writing guides
Collecting evidence
Lobbying funders and academic stakeholders
Increasing recognition of software across all domains
Collecting intelligence from domain experts
Outreach
Scaling up everything else
If we want better software, we need to be able to recruit software experts
Building a new community in academia
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
1428
members
March 2019
UK RSE Association
RSE Conference
rse.ac.uk/conf/2019
Australia/New Zealand: @rse_aunz
Germany: @RSE_de
Netherlands: @nl_rse
Nordic: @nordic_rse
UK: @ResearchSoftEng
USA: us-rse.org
RSE Groups at
28 organisations
bit.ly/RSEGroupsUK
www.rse.ac.uk
"Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come"
-
Software is vital to research
-
Unrecognised software experts have existed in academia for decades
-
The role of the Research Software Engineer has now become widely accepted
-
The needs for these skills is just as prevalent in other research organisations
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
Thank you!
@sjh5000
ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195
Licence
© Simon Hettrick
These slides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
These slides: http://bitly.com/OrdSurv1119
Studies and links
- Software survey:
https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2017-09-06-journey-reproducibility-excel-pandas
- Grants data analysis:
https://github.com/softwaresaved/software_in_grants_GTR
- Publication analysis coming soon
- Top ten reasons to be an RSE: https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-08-23-ten-reasons-be-research-software-engineer
Picture credits
Where not stated on image:
Big data - Tumisu ,Blockchain - mmi19, Cloud computing - Pete Linforth, Cybersecurity - Darwin Laganzon, DNA - Gerd Altman, IBM PC - Ruben de Rijcke, IOT - jeferrb, Machine Learning - Gordon Johnson, Oxford academics - public domain, Pills in hand - Tom Bullock, Goliath cartoon - Cartoonstock, RSE Conference 2016 photo - Society of Research Software Engineering, UK map - Map data ©2018 Google, Society of RSE logo - Society of RSE
Software in research & Research Software Engineers
By Simon Hettrick
Software in research & Research Software Engineers
Presentation for Ordnance Survey engineering group 21 November 2019.
