Developer Stories

Today we go to Berlin in Germany to meet with Stephan Druskat (@sdruskat). Stephan is a research software engineer at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has been involved with a lot of exciting research on linguistics, such as the study of Oceanic languages (https://www.projekte.hu-berlin.de/en/melatamp). Another focus of his work has been “software citation” and ensuring that software becomes a valid and recognised output of research [ref]. And if that isn’t enough, Stephan plays an important part in building the RSE community in Germany.

When you love technology regardless of the domain of science that is using it, it’s often challenging to find a niche in a traditional academic role. In this episode of RSE Stories, We talk to Joe Schoonover, the CEO of Fluid Numerics. Joe found himself in this exact position after graduate school and trying out a postdoc, and embarked on an adventure to start his own company. In this episode we discuss cloud vs. HPC, what it’s like to start your own company, and challenges in both of those spaces.

In today’s episode Peter meets Neil Chue Hong and Simon Hettrick. Neil and Simon are the director/deputy director of the Software Sustainability Institute. For nearly 10 years the institute has been the “backbone” for research software engineering and the RSE movement. It helped build the RSE movement and network, not only in the UK but in other countries. Neil and Simon discuss what changes the coronavirus pandemic brought to research software engineering as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us. And did you know the institute has a blog with cooking recipes?

This week on RSE Stories we chat with Stuart Bowman, a simulations engineer at the MITRE, who is working to “solve problems for a safer world” that range from airplanes to emerging technologies. Stuart offers a valuable perspective about an option for a research software engineer that cares deeply about solving problems and helping people, but doesn’t necessarily want to stay in academia. Have you wondered what it takes to be a pilot, or how air travel is worked on from a research perspective? Take a listen!

RSE Stories is going places! This episode is brought to you from London in collaboration with the Society of Research Software Engineering in the UK (RSE UK). Today’s host is Peter Schmidt talking with Richard Fitzjohn. Richard leads a team of research software engineers (RSE) at the MRC (Medical Research Council) Centre for Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. Before Richard became a research software engineer he worked in theoretical evolutionary biology. But today, he and his team help epidemiologists develop models for infectious diseases. Lately, this meant developing models for the coronavirus outbreak. What does this work entail? And with some models being made public, how can research software engineers ensure that best development practices and standards are being followed and maintained?

In this episode of RSE Stories we talk with Julian Pistorius, a software engineer and self-proclaimed organic software farmer at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, or more specifically, at the Digital Innovations for Agriculture Group (DIAG) at the University of Arizona. Julian is co-lead to a project called Exosphere, which he describes as an OnDemand for cloud computing. Listen closely for insights to taking care of communities, software projects, and how a research software engineer can think about his or her place in the two.

For this episode of RSE Stories, we interview Todd Gamblin, a computer scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that thrives in the gray area between hardware, HPC, and open source development. Todd shares his journey to be working at a National Lab, and how getting angry at software led to development of a hugely popular package manager, Spack.

In this 17th Episode of Research Software Engineer Stories, we interview Andrew Turner, a research software engineer that leads a team at the University of Edinburgh, and discuss how research software engineering has brought a sense of belonging to so many that did not have it before. Andrew shares his hopes for the future, personal challenges, and a little bit of beauty that you might not know exists in caving.

Bob Killen, affectionately known as 'Mr. Bobby Tables', is a cloud engineer specializing in containers and HPC. He dives into the essence of cloud-native practices and the transformative power of Kubernetes. Listeners learn about the distinct yet overlapping roles of research software engineering and cloud engineering, as well as the impact of MLOps. Bob shares insights on community collaboration while bringing humor into the mix. He also discusses challenges in adapting HPC to cloud-native technologies, emphasizing the need for user-friendly tools.

Agriculture is so fundamentally important to the economy, but some would argue that it falls behind with respect to access to technology. For this episode of RSE Stories, we speak with Chris Pahmeyer, an agricultural economist and research software engineer that is aiming to tackle some of these problems.