diff --git a/_newsletters/2024-12-06-newsletter.md b/_newsletters/2024-12-06-newsletter.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..69afc72d --- /dev/null +++ b/_newsletters/2024-12-06-newsletter.md @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: December 2024 Newsletter +editor: Tamora James +slug: 2024-12-06-newsletter +date: 2024-12-06T12:00:00Z+0100 +tags: +category: +link: +description: +type: text +--- + +## The University of Sheffield Research Software Engineering Community Newsletter December 2024 + +Welcome to the December 2024 newsletter for the research software community at The University of Sheffield, featuring news, opportunities, events and training for you. + + +### News + +- Congratulations to Jenni Adams, Open Research Manager at the University of Sheffield, who has won a [Hidden Ref award](https://hidden-ref.org/hidden-ref-competition/) in the Hidden Roles Category\! [The Hidden REF](https://hidden-ref.org/) was launched to raise awareness of the research outputs and roles that are vital to research but overlooked by traditional research evaluation. +- **Join the new [Data Stewards Network](https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/research-data-management/data-steward-network)!** Are you involved in managing, curating, processing, cleaning, or sharing research data? Our new Network will bring together colleagues across TUoS to share expertise and good practice in these areas, access relevant training and support, and increase recognition for data steward roles and activities. [Sign-up](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-6LKr03pMhm3rvXS4zGRoCMKOd8K-_1ERCfxAhMxn1LA6hQ/viewform) is now open and a kick-off meeting will take place in January/February. + +### Events + +#### Upcoming Local Events + +- 2024-12-09 & 2024-12-10, 9.30am \- 1.00pm (in person) [Software Design](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#software-design) (part of the [FAIR2 for research software training programme](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/)). The way you write your code will have a massive impact on how easy it is to maintain. During this course we will learn how to create maintainable, readable and reusable code. Register on [mydevelopment](https://mydevelopment.csod.com/ui/lms-learning-details/app/event/d3c2cca5-d894-44b6-a79b-e93dea7a7c94) (make sure you are signed in). +- 2024-12-11 12.00 \- 12.30pm (online) [HELSI-bites](https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/helsi-bites/home): **Targeting neutrophil cell death as a potential treatment for multimorbidity**, Kieran Bowden, Division of Clinical Medicine. [Join via Google Meet](http://meet.google.com/vmo-sutj-jgs) +- 2024-12-11 3.00 \- 4.30pm (online) **Research-IT Forum**, showcasing the services provided by Research & Innovation IT, which facilitate/support research at the University of Sheffield. The session will start with an update on current & future compute, storage & services, followed by presentations from each service with case studies (successful research applications). [Register here](https://forms.gle/PbGbp4wTZy4LYVqm9) using UoS credentials. +- 2024-12-13 12.00 \- 1.00pm (online) **Information session: non-renewal of Elsevier 'big deal'** UEB has agreed proposals to reduce the Library’s expenditure on resources over the next three years. The immediate consequence of this decision is that we will not be extending our deal with Elsevier beyond 31 December 2024\. In this online information session, members of the Library team will explain the rationale behind the decision, how we will support you to get access to Elsevier material for your teaching and research, and the impact on open access publishing. The session is open to all staff and PGRs, and there will be time for Q&A. It will not be recorded. More information about the Elsevier big deal is available on our [website](https://staff.sheffield.ac.uk/library/news/elsevier-big-deal). [Book via MyDevelopment](https://mydevelopment.csod.com/ui/lms-learning-details/app/event/b0552fb0-4671-485f-80b5-b9dc1330169b). +- 2025-01-29 11.00 \- 11.50am (hybrid) [ReproducibiliTea Journal Club](https://reproducibilitea-sheffield.github.io/posts/2025-01-29/), led by Dr Eddy Verbaan (Head of Library Research Support, Sheffield Hallam University) who has chosen the paper [OSF Preprints \| Working Paper No 6: Exploring Research Transparency, Positionality and Reproducibility](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/chyd4). Sheffield Institute of Education, Charles St Building, Charles St, Sheffield City Centre, Sheffield S1 2LX, UK. + +#### Upcoming External Events + +- 2024-12-06 \- 2024-12-08 (online) [PyLadies Conference (PyLadiesCon)](https://conference.pyladies.com/) is an exciting online and FREE event dedicated to empowerment, learning, and diversity within the Python community\! +- 2025-01-06 10.00 am (online) **Workshop on high performance GPUs in the N8CIR** Calling all BEDE and GPU HPC users in the N8 (Past, present or future\!). We are running a workshop on 6th January to celebrate and discuss the work around high performance GPUs in the N8CIR. [Register here](https://forms.gle/dBaotW1AwsX4KZci7). +- 2025-01-13 - 2025-01-17 (hybrid) [N8CIR DRI Retreat 2025](https://n8cir.org.uk/training-and-events/dri-retreat-2025/) The Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) Retreat is a five-day event involving panel discussions and group sessions for technology specialists to develop soft skills and network with peers. + +### Articles, Blogs, Papers & Podcasts + +#### Blogs/podcasts + +- Blog post: [HPCRSE@RSECon24: 3rd annual meeting of the HPC RSE community](https://excalibur.ac.uk/hpcrsersecon24-3rd-annual-meeting-of-the-hpc-rse-community/) +- Podcast: [Meet The Meetup: SheffieldR Users Group \- Interview with Grace Accad from the University of Sheffield](https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2414bcf1-4248-426d-8ef9-dc3f30b0e659/) Grace Accad was interviewed for the Sheffield Digital Podcast back in October talking about the [Sheffield R User Group](https://sheffieldr.github.io/). +- Podcast: [Code for Thought](https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/): + - [ByteSized RSE: Fun with Containers \- Simon Li](https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes/16133479-en-bytesized-rse-fun-with-containers-simon-li) We're kickstarting a round of new ByteSized RSE online classes and podcast episodes with an episode on containers. Focusing on Podman (used in the online class) and Docker. + - [Pascal or the art of keeping things simple \- in Memoriam of Niklaus Wirth](https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/1326658/episodes/16189116-en-pascal-or-the-art-of-keeping-things-simple-in-memoriam-of-niklaus-wirth) Niklaus Wirth is one of the computing pioneers and his work inspired many other technologies and a generation of engineers. In this episode I discuss one of his many contributions: the programming language Pascal. + +#### Research software practice + +- Reproducibility of Jupyter notebooks: + - [A Large-Scale Study About Quality and Reproducibility of Jupyter Notebooks](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8816763) + - [juv: A toolkit for reproducible Jupyter notebooks](https://github.com/manzt/juv) +- Do you think the [FAIR Principles for Research Software](https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00068) are working? Over 2 years after publishing, with over 500 people involved, we're keen to understand if the FAIR principles have been useful and usable. If not, we’re asking the community what needs changing to make them work. [Complete the survey here](https://forms.gle/sRhRQD4gWBQWzcGS7). +- Relevant for anyone working with images: [Community-developed checklists for publishing images and image analyses](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-023-01987-9) and [associated guidance](https://quarep-limi.github.io/WG12_checklists_for_image_publishing/image_publishing/intro_image_publishing.html). +- [NVIDIA AI Releases cuPyNumeric: A Drop-in Replacement Library for NumPy Bringing Distributed and Accelerated Computing for Python](https://www.marktechpost.com/2024/11/28/nvidia-ai-releases-cupynumeric-a-drop-in-replacement-library-for-numpy-bringing-distributed-and-accelerated-computing-for-python/) + +#### Open research + +- [Digital Scholarly Journals Are Poorly Preserved: A Study of 7 Million Articles](https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article/id/16288/) + +### Opportunities + +- [Announcing FLOSS/fund: $1M per year for free and open source projects](https://floss.fund/blog/announcing-floss-fund/) +- [Kaggle competition to predict protein structures from cryoET](https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/czii-cryo-et-object-identification/overview) + + +### Training + +#### FAIR2 for research software +This training curriculum offers a modular programme to support researchers in applying FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and open research practices to their [research software](https://zenodo.org/records/6623556). The programme is aimed at researchers, including PhDs and postgraduate research students at the University of Sheffield, who create code (whether a few scripts or something more substantial) as part of their research and who want to make their research more open by applying the FAIR principles to their software or simply want to become more confident in the research code they are writing. + +To find out what the FAIR principles are and why they are crucial to make your research more open, you can watch the introductory talk by Head of Research Software Engineering, Romain Thomas, [_Better software for Better research: Introduction to the FAIR2 for Research Software training programme_](https://orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/media/Better_software_for_Better_research_Introduction_to_the_FAIR2_for_Research_Software_training_programme/27283239?file=49937889). You can also view the [slides](https://fair2-for-research-software.github.io/Better_software_for_better_research/#/title-slide) for this talk. + +The [FAIR2 for research software training programme](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/) has been developed by the RSE, Data Analytics Service and Library teams and launched in October. The full syllabus is now live on [MyDevelopment](https://mydevelopment.csod.com/ui/lms-learning-details/app/curriculum/06573f55-12e4-44f1-be4c-fac5ea9d6851) (requires login). The programme will be continuing over the next few months, with the following courses now scheduled: + +- 2024-12-09 & 2024-12-10, 9.30am \- 1.00pm [Software Design](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#software-design) +- 2025-01-20 & 2025-01-21, 9.00am \- 1.30pm [Git, GitHub and GitKraken - From Zero to Hero](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#version-control) +- 2025-02-06, 1.00pm \- 5.00pm [Testing and Continuous Integration](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#testing-and-continuous-integration) +- 2025-02-17 & 2025-02-18, 9.00am \- 1.30pm [Git Collaboration](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#version-control) +- 2025-03-06, 9.00am \- 1.30pm [Documentation](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#documentation) +- 2025-03-24, 9.00am \- 1.30pm [Reproducible computational environments](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#reproducible-computational-environments) +- 2025-04-11, 1.30pm \- 5.00pm [Packaging](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/training/fair4rs/#packaging) + + +### Jobs + +- [Research Software Engineer C++/CUDA (EP-SFT-2024-177-LD)](https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CERN/744000028621301-senior-research-software-engineer-c-cuda-ep-sft-2024-177-ld-), CERN + +Check for advertised RSE and RSE-adjacent roles at the [RSE society's vacancies +board](https://society-rse.org/careers/vacancies/). + +### Community + +#### Digital Research Practice Support Community + +The DRPS community is a group for people that support researchers in carrying out research in the digital age. Meetings +are held monthly, with discussions around events, training and opportunities related to the field. You can join the +[google group](https://groups.google.com/u/1/a/sheffield.ac.uk/g/digital-research-practice-support-community-group/about) to +stay informed. Next meeting: Wednesday 29th January 2025 at 2pm. + +#### LunchBytes + +[LunchBytes](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/community/lunch-bytes/) are short talks from the research community on research +software, data, and infrastructure. + +Due to capacity within the RSE team, there was very limited LunchBytes content over the past academic year. +This should be changing soon, a new coordinator for LunchBytes has been found (Research IT's Farhad Allian), with a plan to reboot these lunchtime seminars in the spring semester. + +More information will be coming out over the coming months, so sign up to the [RSE mailing list](https://groups.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/g/RSE-group) if you'd like to learn more about research software and associated practices, or get in contact with [Farhad](mailto:farhad.allian@sheffield.ac.uk) if you would like to share what you know at an upcoming session! + +### Support + +#### Code Clinics + +Why not come to a [Code Clinic](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/support/code-clinic/)? We're keen to help you. + +Code Clinics are fortnightly supported sessions run by the RSE team and IT Services’ [Research +IT](https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services/research) team. They are open to anyone at TUoS writing code for research to +get help with programming problems and general advice on best practices. + +At each session, members of the RSE and/or Research IT teams will be available to review code, advise, troubleshoot, and +suggest ways to improve your computational workflows. + +#### Research IT HPC Drop In + +HPC Drop-In sessions are providing assistance with HPC related user issues such as challenges in scaling an application +from desktop to supercomputer. We are considering extending the number of our sessions to two or three weekly. These +interactive sessions could provide a better interface with our users than our non-interactive ticketing system. These +sessions are advertised on the [HPC mailing list](https://groups.google.com/u/1/a/sheffield.ac.uk/g/hpc). + +#### Research IT Consultations + +Alongside the HPC Drop-In sessions, Research IT are also running one to one consultations to solve in depth user +specific problems. These consultations can be booked via our webpage. If you are interested please visit the following +link: . + +## Sheffield RSE Team + +The Sheffield RSE Team aims to [collaborate](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/collaboration/) with you to help improve your +research software. They can [provide dedicated staff](https://rse.shef.ac.uk/collaboration/provision/) to ensure that +you can deliver excellent research software engineering on your research projects. + +## Research IT + +[Research IT](https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services/research) directly supports research, both academic and +commercial. We provide large scale HPC systems, advice on everything from statistics to ML to data pipelines and +training for both students and staff. + +Working with academics, our staff are embedded within research groups on both long and short term engagements.