October 2024

Welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter for October!

JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists who code and/or anyone interested in any aspect of 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.

Did you know that there is an RSE Rocketchat channel? You can join it here https://chat.fz-juelich.de/invite/krTNBT

JuRSE news

JuRSE Travel Grants
Are you interested in engaging with RSEs around the world, listening to what they are up to, or in presenting your own RSE work? You want to attend a dedicated RSE meeting, but there is no money in the pot for this?

JuRSE has got you covered! JuRSE is awarding travel grants for deRSE conferences, RSECon, and even US-RSE. We want to enable students, PhD students, postdocs, researchers, and RSEs from FZJ to show how they are doing RSE, to let them contribute to discussions about research software, and to make them part of a larger, nation- and worldwide community.

The call for travel grants is now open for deRSE25, the German RSE Conference taking place in February 2025 in Karlsruhe (more info on deRSE25 at the link below under National Initiatives).

https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-travel-grants

RSE Summer School
This week the JuRSE team have been in Karlsruhe delivering the first RSE Summer School in collaboration with KIT where our 45 attendees are learning about Collaborative Coding, Testing, Cx, Publication, and Documentation.

JuRSE Training Initiative: let us know what you need!
We’re looking to develop training courses in research software engineering for researchers who code and would like to know what topics and formats would be useful to you. Let us know by emailing cl.wyatt@fz-juelich.de.

Helmholtz Software Award 2024 – internal deadline 30th September!
The Helmholtz Software Award 2024 is in its second year and is now open for proposals. We’ve launched the FZJ Call for Nominations this week and are looking for nominations from across FZJ. 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 about the prizes and how you can nominate your software - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/the_latest/call-for-proposals-the-helmholtz-software-award-2024

If you want to hear from the 2023 winners, HiRSE hosted the three winners on their seminar series this week and the recording can be found on the HiRSE YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Du371H0Uk 

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.

October’s Code of the Month is CADET.
CADET is a fast and accurate solver for a comprehensive model family of biotechnological processes. Applications include chromatography, filtration, crystallization, and fermentation. The open source software implements state-of-the-art mathematical algorithms and scientific computing techniques.
Click through to our website (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-code-of-the-month/october-2024) to find out what the JuRSE team like about this software.

Open Hours (every Wednesday - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-open-hours)
In September we had some thought-provoking conversations, with new and familiar faces joining us. Some of the topics explored were about difficulties that can come from changes in a repository or organization name on GitHub/GitLab, previous training sessions, and research software installations. Other discussions included challenges that can arise when using HPC combined with non traditional interfaces, to lower barriers for users who may not be fully comfortable with computing. Finally, we also discussed about the complexity when collaborating with external contributors, when the main development happens on an internal GitLab instance.

Every first Wednesday of the month, we host a ‘topical Open Hour’ where we pick a topic to discuss. Our next topical open hour on Wednesday October 2nd will be on Software Management Plans. Do you have established goals for your research code? If so, how do you keep track of them, and is your team aware of them? Identifying the target user group for your code is crucial. How are you planning to distribute your code, and what strategies do you have in place for providing support and receiving feedback? Considering sustainability for your project in the short, medium and long term is also a factor to think about. This conversation will offer an opportunity to discuss what Software Management Plans are, their importance, and why they should matter to us. Here's some material we will use as a starting point for our discussion: https://www.software.ac.uk/guide/writing-and-using-software-management-plan and the podcasthttps://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes/15479406-en-planning-your-research-software-a-workshop-in-paris

This is an opportunity to learn from each other and expand our collective knowledge so everyone is welcome to join. If you have other unrelated topics or questions, feel free to come along as usual, and we will accommodate for that as well

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 over 54 codes in this initiative now. Check out the codes that are already taking part in this video: - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/the-hirse-code-promotion 

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. Also, we will create a video out of all these slides and put it on the HiRSE YouTube channel. 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.

National Initiatives

Promoting sustainable data practices and infrastructures in biodiversity science
The DFG-sponsored project “Promoting sustainable data practices and infrastructures in biodiversity science” invites data managers working with biodiversity data to an online focus group on licensing biodiversity science data in the EU. https://www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/en/science/sustainable-data-practices-and-infrastructures-biodiversity-science 

The project is based at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science and it is carried out in partnership with the following organisations working in biodiversity informatics and the management of natural history collections: NFDI4Biodiversity, DiSSCo, GBIF and TDWG.

The aim of the focus group is to discuss the day-to-day practice of data managers in relation to data licensing, the institutional policies they follow, and how the evolving landscape of legislations on digital products and services in the European Union is affecting data licensing choices in biodiversity research. The focus group will be held in Zoom on Tuesday 26th November 2024, 10am-1pm. The event will be held in English.

If you wish to take part in the focus group, please write a message to giuditta.parolini@mfn.berlin by 4thOctober 2024 providing some information about your experience with biodiversity data and telling us why you are interested in the event. The number of participants is limited to allow everyone to actively contribute to the discussion.

RSE podcast episodes
Peter Schmidt, podcaster of ‘Code 4 Thought’ returned from his summer break and started up his regular episodes at the end of August. There are already five new episodes ready to listen to which are mostly in English but one is available in German and one in French.
German episode: ‘Stahlwalzungen, Kristalle und Offene Software’ https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes

Upcoming events

deRSE25
The 5th conference for Research Software Engineering in Germany has been launched this week and is open for submissions. The conference will be hosted at KIT in Karlsruhe from 25th to the 27th February in 2025. More info here on the conference and how to submit a contribution to the programme:https://events.hifis.net/event/1741/ and don’t forget to check out the JuRSE Travel Grants https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-travel-grants

Last Modified: 01.03.2025