US-RSE April 2025 Newsletter

April 2025

newsletter April

Published: Apr 25, 2025

💜 This Month: Celebrating Our RSE Community 💜

Orson Scott Card Quote: Every Person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

In this monthly newsletter, we share recent, current, and planned activities of the US-RSE Association, and related news that we think is of interest to US-RSE members. Newsletters are also available on our website alongside the growing resources and information on the US-RSE Association. To receive our newsletter, join US-RSE.

In this issue:

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

USRSE25 Banner

Call for Submissions

We invite submissions for USRSE’25, the third annual conference from the United States Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE), to be held in 🦅 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 🦅 October 6-8, 2025.

Do you write code for your research? Are you curious about career paths available to computational researchers? If so, USRSE’25 is the perfect venue to showcase your work!

Whether you’re a 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.

This year’s conference theme is “Code, Practices, and People.” Submission formats include Birds of a Feather (BoFs), workshops, short talks (including papers, talk abstracts, and notebooks), and posters. The submission deadline for all formats (except posters) is May 16, 2025. Poster submissions are due July 20, 2025.

Visit the conference website for further details including:

  • Technical topics of interest aligned with the conference theme (see last year’s program for ideas)
  • Submission formats, templates, and associated deadlines
  • New Journal Opportunity: authors whose papers are accepted to USRSE’25 will be invited to submit to a special issue of the journal Future Generation Computer Systems. Check our previous special issues.
  • How and where to submit
  • Dates for notification of acceptance and other important dates
  • Venue, hotel, and travel details

Questions about the submission process? Contact usrse2025@easychair.org.

💟 2. Shoutout to Our Volunteers

US-RSE Logo

April is Volunteer Appreciation Month, and we want to take a moment to send a huge THANK YOU to all of you who give your time, energy, and heart to this community 💜 Your contributions — whether it’s organizing events, leading and participating in working groups, working on the job board, sharing ideas, mentoring, advocating, or simply showing up — are what make this space vibrant, welcoming, and impactful. We couldn’t do it without you. On behalf of the Executive Director and the Steering Committee: we see you, we appreciate you, and we’re so grateful for everything you do. Here’s to you — our amazing volunteers! 🎉 👏 ⭐️

— Sandra

🛞 3. Steering Committee Updates

In March, the Steering Committee looked at financing for the US-RSE’25 conference, particularly in light of the current funding climate and the balance between organizational memberships and conference sponsorships, and tentatively approved the conference attendance fees. We followed up on the action items from our strategic planning meeting in February, assigning subcommittees for the areas of focus we identified there. We discussed the potential impacts of hiring a new part-time community manager; expect to hear more on this soon. Finally, we assisted our Executive Director in applying for (and being granted) a no-cost extension to our Sloan funding and also worked with her to debrief the first Organizational Member meeting that took place in late February.

✈️ 4. Community and Travel Funds program

Next Application Deadline: March 31, 2025

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 March 31, 2025. 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.

🤝 5. 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 News

Community Calls

The next community call will be all about conferences and will take place on May 8th at 11AM CDT/12 noon EST. Please visit the Community Calls Website for more information and to access the registration link.

April Community Call (Past)

The April Community Call was about git branching strategies and continuous integration tools, and is available on YouTube here.

👀 6. Interesting Events and Opportunities

Save the date! All of the most exciting events and opportunities in the RSE community are listed here.

😲Get Your Magical US-RSE Unicorn - Edition 2025!😲

🦄 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

R-RSE Affinity Group (Project 2)

Artwork by @allison_horst on Twitter

Interested in designing and launching a mini-hackathon, codeathon, or other R-focused project? Come join the R-RSE Affinity Group (R-RSE) for Project 2 of 3 that we are making available this year! R-RSE exists to increase the representation of R users in the US-RSE community and provide opportunities for members to develop R skills.

Submit your plan by June 6, 2025. More details can be found here.

DMV-RSE Meetup: Maintaining open-source software over the decade time scale: lessons learned and best practices

The Delaware-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) RSE affinity group is hosting a third in-person DMV Research Software Engineers meetup on May 15 in Washington DC! Join us to learn about a new RSE topic, connect with fellow RSE professionals in the area, and make friends!

Speaker: Ryan Dale, a senior scientist and Head of the Bioinformatics and Scientific Programming Core at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development will share insights about what it takes to maintain software for 14 years (and counting). Ryan’s talk will touch on various hot topics in research software engineering like journal article citations vs. actual usage, engaging with a community of users, working with GitHub and various online providers, building out your online CV, and more.

When: Thursday, May 15, 5.30-7pm

Where: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washginton DC

Register and details on Luma or via Meetup.

Non-Government Career Paths for U.S. Federal Data Scientists

rOpenSci and Openscapes are lucky to have as members many U.S. federal employees who enrich our work and community. In a time of great uncertainty for so many government workers, we want to support our members who are considering their next career steps. Join us on Tuesday, May 6 at 8:30PM EDT for a discussion and networking event for and with current and former U.S. federal government data scientists. We will be joined by co-hosts discussing their career paths in other sectors after serving at U.S. federal agencies. Follow this link to register: rOpenSci

When: Tuesday, May 6, 8:30PM EDT

Where: Online

Have an event you want people to know about? Please send us your suggestions for the next newsletter using the #newsletters channel in the USRSE Slack!

📚 7. Featured Reads, Videos, and Podcasts

Stay informed with the latest publications, conversations, and entertaining content from the research software engineering community.

📑 Recent Publications

  • E. A. Jensen, D. S. Katz, “Awareness of FAIR and FAIR4RS among International Research Software Funders,” Scientific Data, Vol. 12, Article 627, 2025. Read the article.

  • B. U. Westner, D. R. McCloy, E. Larson, A. Gramfort, D. S. Katz, A. M. Smith, A. Delorme, V. Litvak, S. Makeig, R. Oostenveld, J.-M. Schoffelen, T. Tierney,
    “Cycling on the Freeway: The Perilous State of Open-Source Neuroscience Software,” Imaging Neuroscience, 2025. Read the article.

🎧 Podcast Highlights

Recent episodes from the Code4Thought podcast:

  • From Volcanoes to Open Source with John Stevenson
    Listen here

  • From Research to Production with Duncan McGregor
    Listen here

  • ByteSized RSE: AI-Assisted Coding with Liam Jianliang Gao
    Listen here

Have something interesting you’d like to share? Please send us your suggestions for the next newsletter using the #newsletters channel in the USRSE Slack!

🏃 8. Get Involved

Volunteering with US-RSE is a great way to build your professional network and gain skills that can help you take the next step in your career. A great way to start is by joining a working group. Reach out to contact@us-rse.org or ask on Slack if you have questions about getting started.

New guidance was recently released on how to create new Affinity Groups and Working Groups. If you see an unmet need in the US-RSE community, we encourage you to create your own group!

As always, we thank everyone who is already contributing for their help in shaping and growing the organization.

US-RSE Working Groups:

🧑‍💼 9. Recent Job Postings

These opportunities were recently posted to the RSE Opportunities page:

Other Job Boards

The following boards might also be of interest.

Please read our job posting policy first, then fill out this Google form to request additions to the job board.

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

© US-RSE • 2021-2025 • US-RSE is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

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