RSE NUAcT Development Programme 2021–2022: Programme overview
The Research Software Engineering (RSE) team at Newcastle University offer software support and training to researchers across the university. This year, we are able to offer a unique programme of events and support to NUAcT Fellows and their staff funded by the university. This is the second blog post in this series about the Programme.
On 16th November we held a welcome event to introduce the team and the Development Programme. You should have received an email with details of how to sign up for our 1:1 Clinics and Software Training.
Keep reading to find out more about what the programme offers.
1:1 Clinics
We are offering NUAcT Fellows and their teams the opportunity to book our 1:1 Clinics which will take place Wednesdays 1–3pm on zoom. Sign up for a triage appointment to discuss:
- Grant development and writing support: Discuss how software engineering can support your research and how the RSE team can be costed into projects. We can discuss your project, contribute suggestions, and help writing technical sections of funding applications. If triage identifies that this would help you, we will be in touch via email to arrange to speak in more detail about your research. This may be with the same RSE you spoke to at the clinics, or with another RSE who has a specialism in your area.
- Technical support: If we identify an area of technical support, we will probably suggest you sign yourself and/or your staff up for our free Software Carpentries workshops, commencing in January 2022. If you need small amounts of specific technical support and we believe there’s an appetite for similar support across other Fellows, we will organise a seminar around the topic and point you to further resources.
- Speculative chat: Perhaps you haven’t got a clear research need identified, but want to talk about your research and what is possible with an RSE. Sign up for a chat to start this process.
Software Carpentries workshops
The RSE team currently runs workshops in introductory software skills and software engineering best practice. These are well-reviewed and frequently over-subscribed. We are offering NUAcT fellows, their staff and their students, the opportunity to apply for reserved places on workshops commencing January 2022. The workshop will be offered 3 times, with more available subject to demand.
Software Carpentries develops lesson materials and trains instructors to teach researchers computing skills around the world. All our team are certified Carpentries instructors. The hands-on workshop runs over 3 days covering topics such as:
- Unix shell: learn how to use commands to speed up file management tasks, interact with version control using Git, and send commands to High Performance Computing (HPC) and cloud technologies.
- Version control using Git: learn how to back up your code securely within a version control system and collaborate with other programmers and researchers.
- Programming in Python: learn some core coding principles and best practice that can be transferred to other languages and contexts.
- Open Refine: learn how to clean up and manipulate data to get it ready for processing and analysis, often referred to as ‘data wrangling’.
These workshops require no prior experience with programming, and to introduce best practice to those who have already done some programming. If this is not of interest to Fellows themselves we encourage you to book places for their teams as part of their CPD.
If you want to learn something else, let us know and if enough people are interested we can run some bespoke training as ‘add-ons’ to the core workshops.
Coming soon…. Seminars around key software topics. If you have an idea for a topic you would like us to cover, or if you would like to collaborate on a seminar, please get in touch with Kate.
