Our annual Research Software Workshop is evolving! We are pleased to announce that our Research Software Workshop has now become the Canadian Research Software Conference.
This will be a larger event that will look to tackle the challenges currently experienced by research software developers on a national and global level. The inaugural conference will be in Ottawa on May 29-30, 2018.
Who should attend?
- Active developers of software for academic research (regardless of job title)
- Computational researchers
- Students
- Developers of open-source software to support research
- Researchers with an interest in software development
Why should you attend?
- To further build a cohesive Canadian community of academic research software developers
- To strengthen the impact of public funds for research
- To learn, collaborate, exchange ideas, and discuss common issues affecting software development for academic research
The early bird rate for registration ends May 1st. We hope to see you in Ottawa at the end of May. For more information and to register, please visit: researchsoftware.ca
Research Software Program Competitive Funding Call 2b: Research Software Re-Use
Call 2b, CANARIE’s second call for research software proposals, is now closed. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a proposal during the call, and for your interest on adapting your existing research platform to support additional research teams.
For further details regarding Call 2b and the purpose of the call, please visit: http://www.canare.ca/software/funding/.
Look for an announcement from CANARIE on successful submissions later this year.
HUBzero Pilot Announcement
HUBzero® is an open-source software platform for building powerful research websites that host analytical tools, publish data, share resources, collaborate, and build communities in a single web-based ecosystem.
We see an opportunity with HUBzero to support research teams that do not have dedicated software support for their research. Our goal is to leverage the HUBzero platform to provide a reusable, research software platform that is capable of supporting those research teams.
For the past few months, the CANARIE research software team has been hard at work investigating HUBzero. We are pleased to announce that pilot projects have begun with Carleton University and the University of Victoria. Our objective with this work is to refine our ability to support research teams on the HUBzero platform. We are hopeful that the platform will be very useful to those teams that want to embrace online collaborative research but do not have the means or expertise themselves.
International Research Software Engineering Leaders Workshop
In January, Scott Henwood, the Director of our Research Software program, had the honour of attending the International Research Software Engineering Leaders meeting in London, UK. Hosted by the UK Research Software Engineers Association (UKRSE), this event was designed for those running or organizing institutional research software engineering (RSE) groups as well as those involved in establishing national networks to support development of software for academic research. The meeting was well attended, with more than 40 representatives from 11 different countries. The workshop-style format allowed participants to effectively work together to pool knowledge, coordinate efforts, and establish collaborations.
Topics of discussion covered most aspects of research software engineering and included:
- Setting up and operating an RSE association
- Managing RSE work and career paths
- An evidence bank to demonstrate the effectiveness of RSE groups
- An international network of RSE associations
- Design patterns for making RSE work in an institution or community
Everyone was engaged in developing action items to continue the discussions. We’ll keep you informed of new developments in future editions of this newsletter, and we encourage anyone involved in leading an RSE group in Canada to consider attending events like this.