April 2026

Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter for April!

JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists and students who code and anyone interested in research software.

The purpose of this newsletter is to update you about JuRSE community initiatives at FZJ and some of the national and international activities in Research Software Engineering (RSE) and inspire you to get involved in the community. Please feel free to forward this to any colleagues who may be interested in this topic and in joining the JuRSE Community.

Quick ways you can get involved:

Join the RSE Rocketchat channel open to all FZJ staff
Join the national RSE Community on matrix hosted by the de-RSE Association.
Join us on Linkedin!

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JuRSE

Are you interested in modern software engineering and cutting-edge research topics? Do you like to work with people and believe that only in teams and communities people can reach their full potential? So do we! Come and join the JuRSE-team! Click here to apply.

JuRSE at deRSE Conference 2026

From the 3-5 March 2026, 20 members of the Forschungszentrum Jülich headed to Stuttgart for the annual conference for research software engineering in Germany. Our FZJ colleagues presented posters covering a range of topics and JuRSE community manager Claire gave a talk. Read the full blog and see what this year’s travel grant recipients had to say about the conference.

Open Hours

From the Open-Hours in March, the main pain point revolved around the usability of git and our gitlab, specifically how to make it seamless and comfortable enough as to convince a research group to start using it. Because as we all know, good software often starts from fruitful and easy collaboration with colleagues that enables tracking changes and discussing ideas.

Please note there will be no open hours during the Easter holidays (30.03.26 – 10.04.26)!But we've hidden a little Easter Egg in the newsletter instead. Let us know in the chat if you found it.

Code of the Month

The JuRSE Team wants to shine a spotlight on the diverse and excellent research software that is being developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

The code highlighted in April is SampleDB, which was co-developed at the Technical Services and Administration of the Peter Grünberg Institute and the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science.This web-based electronic lab notebook is an impressive example of how non-research teams can successfully write research software.

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Jobs at FZJ

We’re including some of the current vacancies that may be of interest.

Software Engineer – Data & Simulation Platforms (ICE-1, Jülich) - (posting closed)

Develop, optimize, and parallelize software and data pipelines for large-scale energy system simulations on HPC platforms, integrating real-time measurements and supporting research teams.

Controls System Engineer (INW-1, Brainergy Park Jülich) -(posting closed)

Develop and automate control software, data acquisition, and real-time analysis workflows for X-ray beamline experiments, enabling high-throughput operando research in hydrogen storage.

IT-Specialist – Data & Development (ICE-2, Jülich) -(posting closed)

Develop and optimize data pipelines, APIs, and a knowledge-graph platform to enable large-scale, AI-supported energy system analyses in an interdisciplinary research team.

MLOps Engineer (JSC, Jülich) - (posting closed)

Operate and scale a production-grade AI inference platform, deploying containerized models, ensuring reliability, and optimizing GPU-based services for research teams in HPC environments.

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HiRSE

HiRSE is now on Linkedin! Connect with us.

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National Initiatives

Helmholtz Software Award: The award scheme aims to highlight the importance and development of sustainable, professional and high-quality research software at the same time as acknowledging the achievements of research software developers. Find out more here.
HIDA mobility Program: The HIDA Mobility Program enables short-term research stays (1- 3 months) for all Helmholtz doctoral researchers and postdocs (employed at or affiliated with a Helmholtz Center), whose work is linked to (applied) data and information sciences. Applications are now being accepted on an ongoing basis.
HIFIS: Did you know that HIFIS has many great resources available including software engineering consulting services? Find out more here.
Helmholtz Research Software Directory: The Research Software Directory is where you can promote and discover research software from Helmholtz centres. After recent updates to the directory, you can now nominate yourself for a spotlight on their website to showcase your research software and they've introduced some more functionality to make integration easier. Check out the details here.

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Events

Collaborations Workshop 2026 (CW26)
The Software Sustainability Institute's annual Collaborations Workshop will take place as a hybrid event from Tuesday 28th April to Thursday 30th April 2026 at ICC Belfast. This immersive, three-day unconference emphasises active collaborations, dynamic discussions, and hands-on problem-solving.
23^rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF’26)
The 23rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF’26), held May 19–21, 2026 in Catania, Italy, brings together an interdisciplinary community to explore emerging technologies and breakthrough ideas across the full spectrum of computing, from hardware and systems to AI and novel paradigms. It focuses on forward-looking research addressing challenges such as energy-efficient AI, new architectures, cloud and edge systems, and innovative applications, providing a venue to share early-stage, high-impact ideas shaping the future of computing. Find out more.
JuliaCon 2026
JuliaCon Global 2026 will be an in-person conference held in Mainz, Germany, 10-15 August 2026. JuliaCon will include talks from from developers and researchers from industry and academia covering a wide range of topics such as biology, economics, data analytics, and software engineering best practices.
More here.
International Research Software Conference (IRSC)
The event focuses on advancing strategic coordination, sustainability, and cross-boundary collaboration in the research software community. It will promote global collaboration, share community experiences and best practices, and aim to influence funding, policy, and research priorities while highlighting leadership in related open science movements. The event will take place online and in-person on the 7^th – 8^th of September in Sheffield, UK. Fine out more.
RSECon26
The event provides a forum to share ideas, debate strategies, and develop collective visions for the future of Research Software Engineering. It will centre around two key themes: “RSEs as part of the research journey” and “Enhancing credit and reproducibility: research software quality, performance and evidence”.
The event will be held in Sheffield, UK on the 9-11 September 2026. Find out more.
deRSE Collaborations Workshop
The workshop will take place from the 23 - 25 September in Göttingen. The event will feature interactive, collaborative formats which give participants room for discussions and provides place for collaborations.
The call for contribution is open until the 15April. See here for more.
2026 DASH / IHDEA Meeting
The DASH (Data Analysis and Software in Heliophysics) and IHDEA (International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance) meetings bring together scientists and software developers working on data analysis, algorithms, community software, data systems, and standards across heliophysics - from the Sun to geospace and beyond. The event will be hostet by the Dublin Institute for advanced Studies (DIAS) in Dublin, Ireland on the 5-9 October. More here.

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Recommended Reading & Tools

Green continuous integration and continuous development practices
(https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/green-continuous-integration-and-continuous-development-practices)
Personalising healthcare with connected digital twins
(https://www.turing.ac.uk/news/personalising-healthcare-connected-digital-twins)
Establishing central Research Software Engineering units in German research institutions
(https://de-rse.org/2023_paper-RSE-groups/paper.pdf)
The Economic Benefits of Open Science
(https://explore.plos.org/open-science-economic-benefits )
Formalizing our commitment to code sharing
(https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003678 )

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RSE Podcast Episodes

“Revealing the structure of crystals and proteins with CrystFEL” – Thomas White, Code for Thought
(https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes/18674558-en-revealing-the-structure-of-crystals-and-proteins-with-crystfel-thomas-white)
“NextBrain: exploring the human brain” – Eugenio Iglesias, James Hughes, Code for Thought
(https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes/18717155-en-nextbrain-exploring-the-human-brain-eugenio-iglesias-james-hughes)

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Further Training Opportunities

HiDA Training courses

There are lots of courses available to you for free from Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA) so check out what's available: https://www.helmholtz-hida.de/course-catalog/en/

Training at FZJ:

Interactive High-Performance Computing with JupyterLab (training course, online)

Instructor: Jens Henrik Göbbert
Dates: 28-29 April 2026, 09:00-13:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-interactive-hpc
Registration until 21 April 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/278/

Programming in C++ (training course, on-site)

Instructor: Sandipan Mohanty

Dates: 4-8 May 2026, 09:00-16:30 each day

Venue: Jülich Supercomputing Centre, building 16.3, room 213a (Ausbildungsraum 1)

Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-cplusplus

Registration until 20 April 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/297/

Introduction to Bayesian Statistical Learning 2 (training course, online)

Instructor: Alina Bazarova

Dates: 5-7 May 2026, 09:00-13:00 each day

Venue: Online

Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-bayesian-sl-2

Registration until 28 April 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/279/