February 2025
Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter!
JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists and students who code and/or anyone interested in research software. (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse)
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 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.
Did you know that there is a RSE Rocketchat channel open to all FZJ staff (https://chat.fz-juelich.de/invite/krTNBT) and you can also join the national RSE Community on matrix (https://matrix.to/#/#de-rse.org:matrix.org) hosted by the deRSE Association?
JuRSE news
Save the date! March 25th - Automated Testing Training course
Ever wanted to get a taste of testing with Python and automating the process with GitLab pipelines? Join us (the JuRSE team, https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/about/the-team) for a 2-hour hands-on tutorial session on automated testing. The prerequisites are a basic Python understanding and familiarity with basic Git usage (with GitHub/GitLab). Registration details coming soon. Stay tuned! If you’d like to volunteer as a helper, you’re encouraged to email Lupe from the JuRSE team, m.barrios.sazo@fz-juelich.de
Open Hours (every Wednesday - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-open-hours)
All are welcome to come and talk to us about anything and this is an opportunity to learn from each other and expand our collective knowledge so everyone is welcome to join.
Looking back, this past month we were happy to see some new and some familiar faces returning. Topics we chatted about included the first steps to consider when publishing software, running GitLab CI pipelines locally without pushing, GitLab runners and CI/CD components, good practices adopted by groups, issues when moving away from Anaconda, and expanding on points in the FZJ software guidelines. That’s why we are here! Come join us for one of the next Open Hours!
JuRSE Code of the Month
The JuRSE Team want to shine a spotlight on the diverse and excellent research software that is being primarily developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich and to do this we’re showcasing one research software a month. This month’s code is developed at the Institute for Advanced Simulation, Civil Safety Research (IAS-7).
February’s Code of the Month is PeTrack (Pedestrian Tracking). It automatically extracts accurate pedestrian trajectories from video recordings (calibration, recognition, tracking). Individual codes enable personalized trajectories with static information of each participant. With a stereo camera also markerless tracking is possible.
Click through to our website (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-code-of-the-month/february-2025) to find out what the JuRSE team like about this software.
HiRSE News
The JuRSE team work closely with the HiRSE project so we include their news here too.https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/collaborations/hirse_ps
Promoting research software: Made in Germany
We now have 72 codes in this initiative. Can we get to 100 codes soon?!
Check out the codes that are already taking part in this campaign: - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/the-hirse-code-promotion
What is this initiative all about? Researchers, postdocs, and students at German universities and research centres write great research software. The HiRSE team wants to make that more visible by bringing your software to the attention of the RSE Community and beyond. We’re looking for research software created, extended and/or maintained by people working at German institutions to join our latest initiative. This is not meant exclusively, we of course welcome also software written by international teams, as long as there is a substantial contribution coming from Germany.
Here is our offer: You provide us with the details of your software using our formhttps://go.fzj.de/research_software_promotion and we’ll create your promo slide that will be shown ahead of a HiRSE Seminar and during HiRSE event breaks. If you have more ideas where this slide can be used, feel free to let us know (and use it yourself, of course)!
If you have any questions or would like to suggest a project that is not your own, please do not hesitate to contact us under hirse@fz-juelich.de.
HIDA Training courses
Check out all the relevant courses for research software engineering on the HIDA course catalogue:https://www.helmholtz-hida.de/course-catalog/en/
And if you can’t see the course you need or want, get in touch with us. We may know where to find an alternative and we’re always interested to hear what our community is looking for as resources. Contact cl.wyatt@fz-juelich.de, Claire Wyatt, Community Manager Research Software Engineering.
International Initiatives
Call for Contributions: RSEHPC Workshop at ISC High Performance 2025 - Submissions due February 28, 2025
2nd Workshop on Research Software Engineering in HPC
Held in conjunction with ISC High Performance - June 13th, 2025
Lightning talk proposals due on February 28, 2025
Workshop website: https://www.helmholtz-hirse.de/events/2025_06_13-rsehpcatisc
Submission form: https://forms.gle/4QP9GNPU2jncTuHa9
RSE? HPC? HPC? RSE? These areas are often quite close to each other. One example of this is the upcoming RSEHPC workshop at ISC25 on June 13, 2025 in Hamburg. We are pleased to announce the RSEHPC@ISC25 workshop and the opening of the call for papers. Our call is looking for contributions in the area of continuous integration and benchmarking for HPC! You are welcome to submit a proposal for a lightning talk for the workshop! We look forward to your perspectives on the topic.
EVERSE Network Launch
The EVERSE Network for Research Software Quality Launch Event, which will take place online at 10h CET on Tuesday 18 February. The goal of this network is to improve policy and practice of research software in Europe and beyond. They welcome everyone who is interested in software quality to join for the event. As well as presenting their ideas and plans, there will be ample opportunity for participants to give their own inputs into the goals and activities of the network. Please register for the event athttps://indico.cern.ch/e/eversenetworklaunch.
Upcoming events
deRSE25 – the 5th Conference for Research Software Engineering, Karlsruhe
The programme is now live (https://events.hifis.net/event/1741/timetable/#20250225) and registration is still open https://events.hifis.net/event/1741/page/514-conference-fees
Workshop on reproducible science and its transformative potential for science - 4th Helmholtz Reproducibility Workshop on March 25, 2025
In this workshop, the Helmholtz Open Science office will delve into the core of reproducible science and its transformative potential for science. The event will address ‘Software reproducibility for data processing and machine learning workflows in the age of AI’ and consider the ‘Contextualisation of reproducibility in the organisation of academic work’. There will also be two on-site workshops: One will deal with the ‘Reproducibility of methods and results’, the other with the ‘Pre-validation of images’.
Program and registration: https://events.hifis.net/event/1750/
And that’s it for this month’s newsletter. If you’d like the JuRSE team to give a seminar about research software engineering and the JuRSE community, get in touch!