March 2026

Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter for March!

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.
JuRSE is now on Linkedin! Connect with us

International RSE Survey

There is still time to complete the 2026 International RSE Survey and help better understand what research software engineers need and how we can advocate for the community.

The RSE Survey produces an incredibly valuable trove of data that anyone can use to understand the RSE community, including national associations, funders and policymakers. Please help us provide this data and support the RSE community by completing the survey.

You can complete the 2026 International RSE Survey in English, French, German or Spanish.

The survey closes on 20 March 2026.

Take the survey here!

If you are interested in diving even deeper into the data, check out the RSE Data Competition where you can reuse data from previous surveys and have the chance to win a prize!

Go to the date competition here!

JuRSE

Open Hours

The hot topic in February was licensing. In particular, we talked about open-source contributions in your spare time and if or how this might overlap with you work as well as what to look out for when using data provided by a third party.

We host Open Hours every Wednesday both in-person in the gegenüber lounge in the ZB and online. 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. Always exciting to see and help with your projects.

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 March is exaCB, which was developed at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC). The exaCb framework is a set of tools and configurations to enable Continuous Benchmarking (CB) on Supercomputers. With a given target application, it provides an easy common entry point to monitor application performance and collect data in a uniform manner.

Find out more here!

Blog Posts

HiRSE

3rd Workshop on Research Software Engineering in High-Performance Computing – AI-guided parallel coding
While not specifically designed for HPC and parallel software, AI tools and techniques offer unique opportunities for the software development cycle. The upcoming RSEHPC Workshop at ISC26, June 26, 2026, in Hamburg, focuses on AI tools, techniques and opportunities for parallel coding and software development for HPC.

Three inspiring keynote talks will set the stage from different perspectives.

The workshop will enable participants to exchange ideas, approaches, good practices, but also tools, obstacles and successes when using AI in the scope of parallel coding and software development for HPC systems.

To contribute to the workshop and make your voice heard submit a lightning talk proposal for the workshop by March 13, 2026.

Upcoming HiRSE seminar
The next HiRSE seminar will feature Morane Gruenpeter from Software Heritage and will take place on the 25^th of March at 11am CET. Further details about the seminar will be shared soon. To make sure you don’t miss the full announcement and registration information visit the HiRSE seminars website.
You can also follow HiRSE on LinkedIn for updates about the seminar series and more!

National Initiatives

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? To find out more go to:

· 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!

Helmholtz Software Awards:
Nominate your software for the Helmholtz Software Award 2026!
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.
The application is structured in two stages. Each Helmholtz Centre may nominate a maximum of three suitable candidates to the call via an internal selection committee. The candidates will then be invited by the organising committee of the Software Award at Helmholtz to provide documentation via a proposal management platform.
Information for FZJ staff on how to apply is on the JuRSE website.

Events

Improving Scientific Software Conference 2026: Maintaining the Joy of Software Development
This conference will be held in Boulder, CA on the 6^th -9^th of April and offers the option of both in-person as well as virtual participation. It brings together software engineers, scientists, developers to share novel experiences and best practices, develop connections across divisions and institutions, and advance our community.

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.

SciPy 2026
SciPy 2026 will take place from July 13-19, hosted at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN, USA. This year the conference will have two highlighted tracks, Spirit of SciPy and, Data-Driven Discovery, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence as well as six specialized tracks.

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 pratices.
The call for proposals will close on Mar 7^th 2026.

Neuroinformatics Unit Open Source Summer School (OSSS)
Applications are now open for the second Neuroinformatics Unit Open Source Summer School (OSSS), August 17-28 2026 in London, U.K. The aim of OSSS is to teach open-source software to process neuroscience data and to bring together researchers and RSEs to build a more sustainable ecosystem around these tools.

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.

deRSE Collaborations Workshop 2026
The call for contributions for the first Collaborations Workshop 2026 of de-RSE is now open!
This workhop on the 23-25^th of September in Göttingen is going to be all about doing not just listening and focussed on interactive formats instead of classic conference talks creating a space for real collaboration, shared problem solving and tangible outcomes.
You can now contribute with session ideas collaboration formats and lightning talks around Research Software Engineering – This is your chance to shape the program and conversations. Submissions are open until April 15^th.

Recommended Reading & Tools

RSE Podcast Episodes

In the latest #code4thought episode “ByteSized: how to get your (digital) ducks in a row – with Richard Acton” you’ll meet Richard Acton, who created a tool to help keep track of all the steps you should take to make your software shareable and reproducible. You can listen to the episode on your podcast app, youtube or here:
“Eine Begegnung mit Katrin Schöning-Stierand (HCDS Hamburg)” (S11, E4; German edition) you can find out more about Katrin Schöning-Stierand and her efforts to build a local RSE community in the port city of Hamburg (Germany). You can listen to the episode on your podcast app, youtube or here:
ULC for Code in Research

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 on the HIDA course catalog.

Some examples:
March 16 - Registration opens for Kickstart R
March 16 – 18 - First Steps in Python (few spots left)
March 17 - Registration opens for RMarkdown

Training at FZJ:

Running and Scaling Performant Deep Learning Models on JSC Supercomputers (training course, online, 1st run)

Instructors: Sabrina Benassou, Ismail Khalfaoui, Javad Kasravi
Dates: 10-12 March 2026, 13:00-17:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-ai-sc-1
Registration until 3 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/299/

Einführung in ParaView zur Visualisierung von wissenschaftlichen Daten (training course, online)

Instructor: Dr. Herwig Zilken
Dates: 11-12 March 2026, 09:00-12:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-paraview
Registration until 4 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/275/

JUNIQ/EPIQ Spring School on Quantum Computing 2026

Organisers: JUNIQ and the NRW-funded project Entwicklungspartnerschaft Ionenfallen-Quantencomputer (EPIQ)
Dates: 16-20 March 2026, 09:00-17:00
Venue: Forschungszentrum Jülich, Building 16.4, Room 301 (Rotunda)
Abstract: https://events.hifis.net/event/3570/
Registration until 28 February 2026: https://events.hifis.net/event/3570/registrations/3509/

Introduction to Parallel Programming with MPI (training course, online)

Instructors: Ilya Zhukov, Jolanta Zjupa
Dates: 16-18 March 2026, 09:00-17:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-mpi-intro
Registration until 9 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/308/

Introduction to Bayesian Statistical Learning (training course, online)

Instructors: Alina Bazarova, Jose Robledo
Dates: 16-20 March 2026, 13:00-17:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-bayesian-sl-1
Registration until 9 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/276/

Introduction to Parallel Programming with OpenMP (training course, online)

Instructors: Michael Knobloch, Jan André Reuter
Dates: 19-20 March 2026, 09:00-17:00 each day
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-open-mp
Registration until 12 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/310/

GPU Programming Part 1: Foundations (training course, on-site)

Instructors: Jan Meinke, Andreas Herten, Kaveh Haghighi-Mood (JSC), Laura Morgenstern (NVIDIA)
Dates: 24-26 March 2026, 09:00-16:30 each day
Venue: Jülich Supercomputing Centre, building 16.3, room 213a (Ausbildungsraum 1)
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-gpu-cuda
Registration until 10 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/294/

Data Analysis and Plotting in Python with Pandas (training course, online)

Instructor: Adel Dabah
Dates: 30 March 2026, 09:00-12:30
Venue: online
Abstract: https://go.fzj.de/2026-pandas
Registration until 23 March 2026: https://indico3-jsc.fz-juelich.de/event/295/

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/

Grundlagen Gitlab

Instructor: Andrea Claßen
Dates: 12 October 2026, 09:00-17:00
Venue: training room P-E, Building 03.1, room 203
Language: German
Registration: https://intranet.fz-juelich.de/de/fzj-ich/trainingsprogramm/aktuelletrainings/termine/tp-deutsch/grundlagengitlab-2026

That’s it for March! Send us any RSE content that you’d like in the newsletter and join us on the RSE Rocketchat channel!

Best wishes,

Claire and the JuRSE Team

Last Modified: 06.07.2026