The origins and future of Research Software Engineering

3 November 2020 - NSF Cyberinfrastructure Strategy Committee           @sjh5000     ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195

By Simon Hettrick

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

Focus was on providing access to software engineering

Software

Training

Community

Policy

Providing software-engineering expertise

Growing a training community

Collecting and using evidence to improve policies

Increasing recognition of software across domains

Outreach

Scaling up everything else

A short history

of RSE

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

2012: birth of the name 

2013: Campaign begins &

first RSE Group

1428

members

March 2019

2014: the UKRSE Association

2016: the RSE Conference

 

 

Australia/New Zealand: @rse_aunz

Belgium: @rse_be

Germany: @RSE_de

Netherlands: @nl_rse

Nordic:  @nordic_rse

South Africa

UK: @ResearchSoftEng

USA: @us_rse

2017: internationalisation

2019: foundation

Why it worked

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

Use

software

Fundamental to

results

Develop own code

69%

92%

56%

http://bit.ly/2TOkK01

RSE Groups at

29 organisations

http://bit.ly/RSEGroupsUK

Funders provided support

Research

Software

Engineering

Researcher

Software

Engineer

Researcher

developer

Research

Software

Engineer

Successes

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

  1. Significant growth of RSEs across the world

  2. Growing support for the role across academia

  3. Policymakers and funders supporting RSEs

  4. The community is resilient, collaborative, democratic and active... but unpaid

Predictions

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

  1. Pressure to change how research software is funded

  2. Pressure to change how research impact is measured

  3. More vital but unrecognised roles will mobilise

Thousands of people now contribute to a vital aspect of research from within a role that recognises their actual work

 

This is thanks to targeted funding for an unconventional area, the continued support of funders, and the hard work of hundreds of RSEs.

 

These slides: http://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5

Thank you!

@sjh5000

ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195

EPSRC Grant no: EP/S021779/1

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://bit.ly/2TOl9Q5