July 2025

Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter for July!

JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists and students who code and/or 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 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.

Two quick ways you can get involved:

JuRSE News

Open Hours (every Wednesday)

All are welcome to come and talk to us about anything. This is an opportunity to learn from each other and expand our collective knowledge so everyone is welcome to join. During this month’s Open Hour, we discussed software copyrights for different scenarios, including large collaborations and consortia, as well as software primarily developed at a single institute. Additionally, we talked about points to consider when making software releases public, including licensing options and collaboration with developers outside of FZJ. We also explored examples of when and how software should be cited. We will be taking a summer break for the JuRSE Open Hours! Our last Open Hour is on July 9th. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and we look forward to seeing you again in September.

JuRSE Code of the Month

Each month we highlight a code from Forschungszentrum Jülich and this month’s code is co-developed at the Institute for Advanced Simulation, Civil Safety Research (IAS-7). This month, check out PedPy: PedPyis a python module for pedestrian movement analysis. It implements different measurement methods for density, velocity and flow. Click through to our website to find out what the JuRSE team like about this software.

What We’re Up To

Training: Speeding up software development with AI (Working with Copilot) - Join us on Thursday 10th July at 10am CEST for a course to learn and discuss the fundamentals of Large Language Models (LLMs) for developing software. In hands-on sessions, you will learn how to set up VSCode to use with Github Copilot and other open-source AI-coding assistants and practice using its functionalities to speed up and improve writing code. Space is limited, please register.

HiRSE News

The JuRSE team work closely with the HiRSE project so we include their news here too.

44th HiRSE Seminar - ‘Research practices in a digitalized world: Research software, mundane software and programming languages in research’

Join us Tuesday, 8th June at 11am CEST for the 44th HiRSE Seminar where Judith Hartstein from the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) will talk about ‘Research practices in a digitalized world: Research software, mundane software and programming languages in research.’ No registration needed, more information here.

More speakers needed! We’re always looking for more speakers for this seminar series so please email Claire (cl.wyatt@fz-juelich.de) if you have a suggestion.

Helmholtz Codes! Workshop - 4th to 6th November 2025 – Berlin

HiRSE, HIFIS, and HIDA are hosting a 3-day invitation-only workshop for people writing and maintaining research software within Helmholtz. During this event, we will discuss options on how Helmholtz could further support our daily work in research software engineering. Together, the participants will envision three scenarios:

1. What if there is no additional money coming in for research software?

2. What if we had a huge amount of money waiting for us?

3. What if this amount were small(er)?

More info about the workshop can be found here (registration is invitation-only for code authors listed in the Helmholtz Research Software Directory, get in touch if you think you should have received an invitation).

HIDA Training courses

HiRSE Code Promotions

We’re looking for research software created, extended and/or maintained by people working at German institutions to be part of this awareness and visibility campaign. We want to shine a light on the great work happening across Germany and you can see the codes that have already got involved at this link.

Here is our offer: It’s really easy and takes just a few minutes. You provide us with the details of your software using our form and we’ll create your promo slide that will be shown ahead of a HiRSE Seminar, during HiRSE event breaks and of course you can use it on your website or in a presentation.

National Initiatives

  • Survey on the Use of the NFDI4Culture Registry for Research Tools & Data Services: With this short survey, we aim to better understand how well the NFDI4Culture Registry is known within the community and how it is being used. Your feedback will help us improve the service and tailor it more closely to the needs of its users. Find the survey here.

International Initiatives

  • Is your code product grade? If so, check out the latest EU Funding Call
  • Are you involved in research software, tool development, or scientific computing? Submit your contribution for Research Software Engineering (RSE) Day, taking place on 4 December 2025 at Campus Arenberg, KU Leuven. This annual event, organised around the Belgian RSE Community (BE-RSE), focuses on improving research software practices, with this year’s spotlight on open source.

Upcoming Events

  • Retreat: The NES Col-Lab Retreat will take place in Schoorl, Netherlands, from Wednesday 27 to Friday 29 August. The event will bring together researchers, data stewards, software engineers and support staff with an affinity for the Natural and Engineering Sciences.
  • Conference: RSECon25 – Warwick, UK - 9th-11th September – Registrations now open! Don’t miss your chance to attend the original RSE Conference. The ninth annual conference for Research Software Engineering (RSECon25) will be hosted at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK from 9-11 September 2025.
  • Conference: US-RSE’25 - 6-8 October, Phildadelphia, USA ‘Code, Practices, and People’ The third annual conference from the United States Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE), to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 6-8, 2025. Call for submissions is closed but they are we're still accepting poster submissions through 7/20 for USRSE25. More info on the conference.
  • Conference: dDeRSE Conference 2026 - We are happy to announce that the deRSE26 Conference will be hosted and organized by the University of Stuttgart from Tuesday, March 3, to Thursday, March 5, 2026! You are still very welcome to join the organisation committee. If you’re interested, sign up here.

Upcoming Trainings at FZJ:

RSE Podcast Episodes

  • Open Research - at FOSDEM 2025: FOSDEM is the annual event for all things free and open source software in Europe happening over the 1st weekend in February in Brussels. In this episode Peter Schmidt wants to talk about one "dev room" (developer room) in particular: the one on Open Research, that has been running since 2020. We hear from a variety of speakers on topics ranging from climate change to human choreography in computing.
  • Ein Code Klub beim Max Planck Institut - mit Jonas Hagenberg, Vera Karlbauer: Vera Karlsbauer und Jonas Hagenberg arbeiten am Max-Planck Institut für Psychiatrie in München. Aber Software und Datenverarbeitung spielt auch dort eine große Rolle. Vera und Jonas erzählen uns etwas über ihre Arbeit und über den Code Klub den sie gegründet haben um anderen Forschenden und Studierenden den Zugang und Umgang mit Software etwas zu erleichtern.

Recommended Reading

Additional Resources and Opportunities  

  • Help shape a reference curriculum for Research Software Engineering (RSE) in Germany: A new initiative is underway to develop a reference Master’s curriculum for RSE in Germany—coordinated as a joint community effort. The aim is to supplement general courses in software engineering, data science, and domain-specific science with RSE-specific modules that address the unique context of software development in research. Workshops will focus on defining relevant competencies, course structures, and RSE-specific perspectives, with outcomes contributing directly to a comprehensive and inclusive curriculum. While centered on the German education system, the approach can be adapted internationally. Explore the project on Github.

That’s it for July! Enjoy the warm weather and join us on the rocketchat channel #rse.

Last Modified: 16.07.2025