Developer Stories

What is the line between a biostatistician and a data scientist? And how does the work or impact differ between academia and industry? Today on RSE Stories we talk to Daniel Sabanés Bové, a Senior Principal Data Scientist and Associate Director at Roche who graduated from the University of Zurich with a PhD in statistics. Not only does Daniel build tools, he has published a statistics book, leads a team, and can see his work trickling down to the production of medicine. So what does a bioengineer do at a company like Roche? He’s engineering tools for statisticians to do better work or gain insights, and often even open-sourcing them! And he loves his job. Are you interested in biostatistics or collaboration in this domain? Daniel would be a good person to reach out to, and this episode a good one to listen to!

Jay Lofstead is a member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and this year’s Supercomputing 2022 (SC22) Inclusivity Committee Chair. In this episode, Jay tells us about his experiences volunteering with SC over the past few years, the history of the Inclusivity committee, and his plans for implementing change to make Supercomputing 2022 a truly accessible and inclusive environment for all participants! He also ends with a call to action. If you have feedback about your experiences at Supercomputing that could help Jay improve inclusivity, please email the committee at sc-inclusivity@info.supercomputing.org.

Megan Phinney is a recent graduate of Iowa State University, and will starting a full time position at Los Alamos National Lab after her graduation this month! In this episode, Megan tells us her story of stumbling on a national lab (hint, a funky pen is involved!) and her early experiences working as an intern at LANL, and how important a particular teacher was to her path. We discuss how research software engineering might relate to HPC, the student cluster competition at the Supercomputing (SC) conference, the importance of people, and projects Charliecloud and squashfs. By the way, Megan makes beautiful slides! We all should aspire for this level of funny and greatness :)

For the most part when I’ve been introduced to DEI groups and initiatives, they mean well but I’m left feeling a bit lost. I either don’t fully understand what I can do, or I don’t think the initiative itself fully grasps the depth of the issue. My view on DEI, “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” changed when I watched a talk by Rowland Mosbergen, a strategic leader at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia, and founder of Practical Diversity and Inclusion, a resource for improving Diversity and Inclusion for individuals and organizations to use. Rowland is one of those people that you talk to and you are given pause, because he’s given insights you’ve never thought about before. In this episode of RSE Stories, we talk to Rowland about his life experiences, and how important it is for all of us to advocate for others. We talk about challenges and strengths of the RSE community, interviewing, and how we collaborate across communities. This was one of my favorite conversations that I’ve had on the show, and I hope that you find it leaves as impression as well.

Peter is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of College London, a role he joined in late 2019 after a rich career in the private sector. In this 71st episode, Peter talks about his journey from Germany, to London, and what it’s been like to work in everything from medical imaging to working at Sony and reference manager Mendeley. How did he stumble on his first role as an RSE, and what did it push him to try? What kind of experiments is he running at his new podcast Code for Thought? Listen to this week’s episode to find out! A personal note from producer @vsoch, I am so grateful to have had Peter’s voice on the RSE Stories podcast for a year, and am cheering him on for his podcast experiment and fun adventures in his new RSE career! I mean what I said Peter, you are soft-spoken and kind and it was a pleasure to work with you.

For our 70th episode we chat with Peter Vaillancourt, a Computational Scientist at the Cornell Center of Advanced Computing. Peter took a non-traditional path to his current role, starting in the Air Force and eventually studying math and physics, and eventually finding his love for programming. In this episode, Peter talks about his journey to understand himself, and some of the challenges that our community faces when dealing with diversity, trauma, and understanding one another. We talk about retention and opportunity, and the idea of micro-compassions - small acts of kindness that make our community a place that we want to be. Could we imagine a future where our community and larger tech is a safe place for all kinds of people? Could we see a future where it’s possible to get training in computational science without requiring a domain science? Listen to the episode to find out!

Welcome to the New Year, my dearest reader! We open 2022 with our 69th episode, an interview with Chase Million, the CEO of Million Concepts, a research and consulting company with expertise in planetary science, remote sensing, and astronomy. Chase presents us with a less commonly seen model for providing research software engineering services, and tells us the story of how he went off any established path to pursue work that he simply didn’t see possible to do in traditional academia. Are you business minded, or have you ever thought about leaving the constraints of academia? This is one story you’ll want to hear!

Tim Haines is one of those people you would be lucky to have as a colleague. If you spend just a few minutes with Tim, you’ll quickly find yourself having fun. Why? Tim is easy to laugh, and unbelievably smart and so wanting to share this with you. In this episode of Research Software Engineer stories, Tim tells his extensive journey through academia (17 years!) touching astophysics, computer science, and software engineering. But was it about the pieces of paper? Not for Tim - he has a passion for learning, and shares this with us today through our conversation about compilers, application binary interfaces, and systems programming. If you too like learning and enjoy reading, we’ve linked a bunch of Tim’s favorite books and his CppCon talk from a few years back.

Happy Halloween listeners! This is the third Halloween special episide of the Research Software Engineer Stories Podcast, and this year we have a story that you might relate to, and give you a spurt of magic. You see, this year we get a glipse of what it means to have an Open Source Halloween. What would it mean if candy were akin to software? To go along with the episode, I’ve created for you the Open Source Candy Genereator where, if you create a piece of candy, it will show up on the Open Source Halloween portal. Whether you have kiddles that you can go out with to Trick or Treat, or if you are like me and just revel in the decorated houses, purples and oranges, and making Halloween candy houses, from the Research Software Engineer Stories podcast we wish you a Happy Halloween!

What happens when you mix hard work, curiosity, creativity, and a little luck? You hear an inspiring story like that of Alec Scott, a current Senior at the University of Arizona. In this episode of RSE Stories, Alec shares his story from discovering a passion for working in the space of software and research, and finding research software engineering. Have you heard of Autamus, or Arken? These are some of Alec’s projects for container automation and distributed file storage, and they are likely of interest to you!