US-RSE September 2025 Newsletter

⛰️ This Month: Get Prepared for USRSE'25 ⛰️

newsletter August

Published: Sep 27, 2025 by Tinashe M. Tapera

US-RSE’25 is finally here! For those making the pilgrimage to sunny Philadelphia in a few short days, we’ve compiled a handy task list that ensures that you’ll be prepared and ready to make the most of this year’s exciting conference! Read on for more…

Conference

In this issue:

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

USRSE25 Banner

Heading to USRSE’25 in Philadelphia? We’ve put together a “Know Before You Go” guide to make sure you’re ready for a smooth and engaging conference experience. From registration and meals to socials events, accessibility guides, and networking tips, everything you need to plan your trip is in one place!

👉 Read the full Know Before You Go Guide

Before You Arrive

  • Review the full program online; a printed overview will be at check-in
  • Pack layers (Philly weather: 50–70°F, hotel rooms may run cool)
  • Bring laptop, chargers, and business cards

Onsite Logistics

  • Registration: Sunday evening through Wednesday morning at the Marriott Old City
  • Meals: breakfast, lunch, and evening receptions provided
  • Tuesday social event: aboard the historic Moshulu ship
  • Quiet rooms available for downtime

Connectivity & Networking

  • Conference Wi-Fi and charging stations available
  • Join the US-RSE Slack and use #usrse25 on social media (X, Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn)

Accessibility & Support

  • Registration desk will be available to assist with accessibility requests, health, safety, and Code of Conduct issues

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.

USRSE’25 is possible thanks to our Platinum and Gold Conference Sponsors: Dell Technologies, SHI, Schmidt Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Princeton University, Globus, Los Alamos National Laboratory, IBM, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

🔊 2. Executive Director’s Update

Connect with Sandra at Upcoming Events

Sandra will host office hours at our USRSE’25 conference. You can sign up here to reserve a 15-minute slot. If the timing doesn’t work out, don’t worry - she will also be around during the conference sessions and social events. Please feel free to say hello anytime!

Lastly, in November, USRSE will have a dedicated booth at The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC25) in St. Louis, MO, USA, from November 17-22. Sandra will be there along with other USRSE members, and we are looking for volunteers to help out! If you are attending SC25, please let us know!

🛞 3. Steering Committee Updates

In September the Steering Committee largely focused on issues related to finances and the annual conference. As we’re nearing the end of our initial Sloan Foundation grant funding, we looked at what areas of our budget have some room for additional spending, where we need to reallocate funds to cover expenses that were higher than anticipated, and how this all affects our budget for the coming year. We also went over the budget for the USRSE’25 conference and lessons learned from this for the USRSE’26 conference, as well as finalizing SC involvement and meetings at this year’s conference. We got an update from our Executive Director about her work to get Research Software Engineer included as a job title with the Department of Labor Statistics, and we started planning for this year’s Annual General Meeting and Steering Committee election.

🤝 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

✈️ 5. 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 Community and Travel Funds Program is not currently accepting applications. We hope to obtain more funding in the future. Please check back on the program page here.

🗞️ 6. Community News

🥳 The results are in for the 2025 US-RSE Community Awards! 🥳

US-RSE Technical Excellence

Recognizes outstanding technical contributions that materially advance research software engineering practice. This award celebrates “the things RSEs do that are normally ignored.”

  • Student/Early Career: Manoj Kumar Cebol Sundarrajan

  • Professional: JAWS Team - Daniela Cassol, Mario Melara, Elais Player-Jackson, Ramani Kothadia, Setareh Sarrafan, Seung-Jin Sul, Nicholas Tyler

US-RSE Community Impact and Leadership

Honors leadership and service that amplifies the reach, visibility, and growth of the RSE profession. This award focuses on people who step beyond their own codebases to promote belonging, engagement, and awareness.

  • Student/Early Career: Daniel Madren
  • Professional: Rinku Gupta

Visit the Awards page to read about our winners, and please join us in congratulating them!

📢 “Research Software Engineering: Discovering and Bridging Knowledge Gaps” is out now in IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering: https://s.dlr.de/cise-special-issue-rseng.

This special issue collects work that has been started during the Dagstuhl Seminar 24161 “Research Software Engineering: Bridging Knowledge Gaps” (April 2025): https://dagstuhl.de/24161.

Over 5 papers, it lays out how Research Software Engineering and Software Engineering Research should collaborate in the future for mutual benefit. RSEs can leverage state-of-the-art methods and tools from software engineering research to create better software that enables better research. SERs can gain insights into an understudied area of SE practice, and develop new research questions and agendas that produce the methods and tools required for state-of-the-art software engineering in research contexts. The issue has been guest-edited by our community members Daniel S. Katz, Caroline Jay, Lars Grunske and Stephen Druskat.

Community Calls

The next community call will be on Friday, October 10, 2025, 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT

Topic: Informal RSE Hangout

On October 10, it’s time for our monthly community call! This one falls right after USRSE’25, so many of us will be just returning from an exciting week of travel, talks, and connections. Instead of a formal program, we’re keeping things light — come join us for a relaxed virtual hangout with fellow RSEs, swap conference highlights, and simply unwind together. No agenda, just open conversation and community connection! And if you weren’t able to attend the conference, this is a great chance to hear impressions and stories directly from your colleagues.

Registration link: Zoom

👀 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

  • G. O’Brien, “How Scientists Use Large Language Models to Program,” CHI ’25: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–16, 2025. Read the article.

  • D. Mittal, “A Study for Application of Decision Making Model in a Public Organization,” Spectrum of Operational Research, vol. 3, no. 1, 2025. Read the article.

  • W. F. Godoy, T. Melnichenko, P. Valero-Lara, W. Elwasif, P. Fackler, R. Ferreira Da Silva, K. Teranishi, J. S. Vetter, “Mojo: MLIR-Based Performance-Portable HPC Science Kernels on GPUs for the Python Ecosystem,” WACCPD Workshop at IEEE/ACM SC25: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, St. Louis, MO, Nov 16–21, 2025. Read the article.

  • D. S. Katz, E. A. Jensen, M. Barker, “Understanding and advancing research software grant funding models,” Open Research Europe, vol. 5, p. 199, Jul 25, 2025. Read the article.

    📝 Blog Posts

  • D. Katz, M. Hosseini, S. Edmunds, “Guest Post – Code Plagiarism and AI Create New Challenges for Publishing Integrity,” The Scholarly Kitchen, Aug 28, 2025. Read the post.

  • Stack Overflow, “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025,” Stack Overflow Insights, 2025. Read the report.

  • AI Darwin Awards Team, “AI Darwin Awards 2025 — Celebrating Spectacularly Bad AI Decisions,” AI Darwin Awards Blog, 2025. Read the post.

🏃 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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