US-RSE July 2025 Newsletter

🫶 This Month: THANK YOU for Contributing to US-RSE'25 🫶

newsletter July

Published: Jul 29, 2025 by Tinashe M. Tapera

Welcome to this month’s edition of the US-RSE Newsletter! US-RSE’25 is right around the corner, and we’re so pleased to have received so many great submissions!

Group of RSEs stock photo

In this issue:

🔔 1. US-RSE Conference 2025 (USRSE’25)

USRSE25 Banner

Are you making plans to join us in 🦅 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 🦅 October 6-8, 2025? The theme for the third annual conference from the United States Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE) is “Code, Practices, and People.”

🔔 Registration is now open! 🔔

Thank you to all who have submitted work for this conference! Reviews (for posters only) are underway and notifications should be sent before August 16. We received an impressive 170 submissions across all tracks, with particularly strong interest in talks and posters. This contributed to a competitive peer review process and a slate of high quality material to look forward to at the conference in October.

Registration opened in late June. Check out our registration page for information on rates and for the link to register through Eventbrite. Please note that August 8 is the author registration deadline (all formats but posters) and August 20 is the early-bird registration deadline.

Whether you’re a research software engineer, data scientist, digital humanist, scientific programmer, software developer, or research software user, US-RSE is where people at the intersection of code and research come together. The USRSE’25 conference is your chance to connect with peers, mentors, and experts in the fast-growing world of research software. Don’t just take our word for it—100% of last year’s post-conference survey respondents said they would return and recommend the conference to others.

Visit the conference website for further details including: venue, hotel, registration costs and deadlines, travel details, dates for notification of acceptance and other important dates.

🔊 2. Executive Director’s Update: State of AI in the Workplace

Sandra has worked with the Academic Data Science Alliance on the proposal “State of AI at the Workplace” and we received the funding! There will be Birds of the Feather (BoFs) and USRSE’25 and RSECon’25 in the UK. We plan for more also at SC25 and more interactive events. The survey “Generative AI at the Workplace” is also part of it.

The goals of this project as well as the survey are to capture broad “state of the field” information and to help define topic areas for a set of convenings with the RSE community over the coming year. These convenings are intended to dig into the details of AI use in the RSE workplace: to understand what’s already happening, identify key challenges and opportunities, and explore how RSEs themselves can actively shape the future of AI-augmented research software engineering.

Please take a moment to fill out the 5-minute survey here.

🛞 3. Steering Committee Updates

In July, the Steering Committee focused on several operational and strategic efforts. We spent significant time discussing the logistics of facilitating funding for the conference, specifically travel for students and early career participants. In collaboration with Sandra, we outlined key priorities for our new Interim Project Manager. This is a temporary role, expected to last approximately six months, and will differ in scope and focus from the previous Community Manager position. We also have been preparing and participating in the development of two important surveys: (1) an internal US-RSE community survey and, (2) the next iteration of the International RSE survey. Both surveys will help us better understand and serve both our members and the broader RSE community. Lastly, we have been working through some ongoing challenges related to external funding and the processes and procedures of fiscal sponsorship.

🤝 4. Organizational Founding Membership

US-RSE envisions a future where Research Software Engineers are universally respected for advancing science, technology, and society through the transformative power of research software engineering. We’re excited to share that the momentum around our Organizational Founding Membership continues to grow! See the list below for the current members (six more are onboarding at the moment).

Organizations that join on or before November 30, 2025, will be recognized in perpetuity as founding members. Founding organizations will also lock in current membership fees through December 31, 2028. Organizational support helps sustain and expand vital community offerings, including the annual conference, monthly calls and newsletter, job board, working groups, and new resources.

Please reach out to Sandra Gesing at sandra@us-rse.org if you are interested in becoming an organizational founding member!

Premier Members

Standard Members

Basic Members

✈️ 4. Community and Travel Funds program

Part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for US-RSE has been delegated for the Community and Travel Funds program. Members of US-RSE can apply for funds for community or individual purposes for event costs, get-togethers, travel funding, and more.

The next application deadline is December 31, 2026. We encourage you to apply for funding to support your community and travel needs!
The application process is simple and straightforward. You can find the application form here.

🗞️ 6. Community News

INTERSECT 2025 Bootcamp (via @cosden Ian Cosden!)

The 3rd year of INTERSECT: Research Software Engineering Training brought together another awesome cohort of graduate students, postdocs, and early-career researchers for a week-long deep dive into intermediate and advanced research software engineering (RSE) practices.

The 4.5 day bootcamp of intensive, hands-on training is designed to engage participants with topics critical to building sustainable, reproducible, and collaborative research software. The curriculum emphasizes:

  • Software design principles like modularity and functional independence
  • Testing infrastructure, like unit testing and continuous integration with tools like TravisCI and Jenkins
  • Collaboration techniques using GitHub workflows (pull requests, code review, issue tracking)
  • Software packaging & distribution for real-world deployment and community reuse
  • Documentation strategies using tools like Sphinx and Doxygen

By targeting those with an existing foundation in research software development, the bootcamp fosters a unique environment where participants could immediately apply best practices to their own work—and return to their institutions as local leaders in research software sustainability. Congratulations to Ian and the team at Princeton University for another successful bootcamp!

Interested in attending next year? Just visit the INTERSECT website to learn more about the program and sign up for updates.

Community Calls

July Community Call

Our recent community call was packed with valuable insights, focusing on topics close to our hearts, including the US-RSE community, RSE careers, funding, and more. After a leadership overview and presentations from two of our members, we split into breakout rooms to dive deeper into these topics.

One standout breakout room focused on RSE careers, exploring how to find RSE roles, effective resources for job applications, keywords, and more. You can check out the notes from this discussion here.

We’d love to hear from you! Share the keywords you use when searching for your next RSE role or when posting RSE positions. Your input can help us all navigate the job market more effectively.

👀 7. Interesting Events and Opportunities

🦄 They Arrived as a Herd… But They’re Ready to Travel to You! 🚀

The 2025 US-RSE magical unicorns have officially arrived!

US-RSE Unicorn

They came as a herd, packed together in a carton, just like how research software engineers come together to build a stronger community. But now, these unicorns are ready to set off on their own journeys—finding new homes with RSEs, allies, and supporters like you.

This year’s edition proudly wears a red shirt featuring the US-RSE logo integrated with 2025, symbolizing another year of growth, collaboration, and impact. Just like our community, these unicorns remind us that while we each have our own paths, we are part of something bigger—a movement dedicated to advancing research software and supporting those who make it happen.

By adopting a unicorn, you’re not just getting a fun desk companion—you’re also supporting US-RSE’s mission to strengthen the RSE community, advocate for recognition, and create more opportunities for collaboration.

📦 Limited supply—once they leave the herd, they’re gone!

🚚 They’ll ship for free within the US! 🚚

If you're from another country and want to get your hands on a unicorn, reach out to us, and we'll find out whether we can arrange shipping for you.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to own a piece of US-RSE magic and donate to get your Unicorn 2025 Edition today. This edition will be available while supplies last until December 10, 2025 ✨🦄✨

👉 https://give.communityin.org/unicorn2025?ref=ab_20w0PysS59P20w0PysS59P

📚 8. Featured Reads, Videos, and Podcasts

📑 Recent Publications

  • N. U. Eisty, J. C. Carver, J. Cohoon, I. A. Cosden, C. Goble, S. Grayson, “Ten Simple Rules for Catalyzing Collaborations and Building Bridges between Research Software Engineers and Software Engineering Researchers,” IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE), 2025. Read the article.

  • S. Gesing, M. Dahan, C. Stirm, L. Hayden, J. Baker, “NAIRR Portal Report,” Zenodo, Version v1, July 2, 2025. Read the report.

  • F. Schreiber, T. Czauderna, D. Garkov, N. Gröne, K. Klein, M. Lange, U. Scholz, B. Sommer, “Sustainable software development in science – insights from 20 years of Vanted,” Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics, July 1, 2025. Read the article.

📝 Blog Posts

  • A. Mittal, “From Cloud Chaos to Developer Delight — A Practical Guide to Building Your First Internal Developer Platform,” Medium, May 19, 2025. Read the post.

  • S. Gregurick, “Introducing the 2025–2030 NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science,” NIH Director’s Blog, June 2025. Read the post.

🎧 Podcast Highlights

Recent episodes from the #code4thought podcast:

  • A Service for All Seasons - the MetOffice UK Listen here

🏃 9. Get Involved

US-RSE Working Groups:

🧑‍💼 10. Recent Job Postings

Other Job Boards

This newsletter is a joint effort of members of the US-RSE Association.

© US-RSE • 2021–2026 • US-RSE is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives

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