US-RSE April 2026 Newsletter

🤳 Just Hit Me Up On Slack 🤳

newsletter April

Published: Apr 13, 2026 by Tinashe M. Tapera (Author & Editor), Sandra Gesing (Editor), Ian Cosden (Editor)

Welcome to the April 2026 issue of the US Research Software Engineer (US-RSE) newsletter! If you’re reading this, you’re probably connected with US-RSE through Slack, which is our organization’s primary platform for instant messaging. Most people consider Slack a necessary burden of the workplace, having taken the place of phone calls, fax, pagers, and email. But is there more to Slack than annoying notifications? Today we’re going to discuss what Slack is, how it came about, and how US-RSE members use it to connect, grow, and make real, lasting impact beyond just their code editors.

Question: Who do you think is the chattiest Slack user in US-RSE? Place your bets NOW! 😉

Slack message with team communicating and collaborating in app on desktop and mobile.

In this issue:

🔔 Just Slack Me, Whenever! 🔔

In 2012, software engineer Stewart Butterfield was hard at work on what he believed to be the next big thing in MMORPGs. The game, called “Glitch,” ended up being a commercial flop, and Butterfield and his team needed to pivot quickly to make the most of the 6 million dollars they had left from investor Ben Horowitz. Instead of throwing in the towel, Butterfield called Horowitz on the phone and proposed a new idea. Throughout the development process, Butterfield told Horowitz, the team of engineers had developed a novel instant messaging system to facilitate commnunication in-game, and in the process of eating their own dog food, discovered that the system worked really well for managing their work communications, too. Butterfield proposed that their company, then called Tiny Speck, pivot to focus on building a new product based on this instant messaging system. The result was the creation of Slack, which has since become one of the most popular communication platforms in the world.

Today, Slack powers communication and collaboration for millions of users and businesses, and has transformed the way teams collaborate and communicate. At US-RSE, we of course use Slack to manage internal communications between leadership teams, but more importantly, it has grown to become the virtual landing page for our community. At present, there are over 140 individual channels dating back to 2018, with over 3100 unique member accounts participating in the conversation. Some days see over 500 messages going back and forth between members and channels:

Plot of message volume in Slack

One unique feature of Slack is the ability to create channels, which act as virtual rooms dedicated to specific topics, projects, or interests. These channels can be private or public, allowing teams to organize conversations by priority, relevance, and interest. At US-RSE, we also have meta-grouping channels, such as “Working Groups,” (#wg-) and “Regional Groups,” (#rg-), which serve as hubs for specific communities within our larger organization. For example, the #wg-code-review and wg-diversity-equity-inclusion channels are spaces for members to discuss and collaborate on code review practices and DEI initiatives, respectively. The #rg-nyc channel serves as a hub for members located in and around the greater New York City area, where they plan get-togethers and other in-person events. Participating in public channels is a great way to stay informed about what’s going on in the community, and importantly, it allows everyone in the Slack channel to follow the conversation and chime in when they have something to contribute. This helps us all, “learn with the garage door open,” increasing the accessibility of our conversations and the impact of our work.

Plot of channel activity in Slack

It may be obvious that the #general channel has the most messages, but did you know that in a one-year span, some of the most active channels include #random, #events, and #wg-ux? The most popular language-specific channel in the Slack was, of course, #python, and the most active regional group channel was #rg-north-carolina.

Table of top channels in Slack

And while we as RSEs may still be evaluating AI for its usefulness in our work, Slack’s built-in AI summarization tool tells us that there are a wide array of conversations happening in our Slack, from conference planning, to project management, to hiring and funding announcements.

Screen capture of Slack's AI summarization tool

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to join our Slack and get involved in the conversation. It’s a great way to stay informed about what’s going on in the community, connect with other members, and contribute to the ongoing work of US-RSE. You can get onto our Slack by joining US-RSE free, here.

PS: Just for fun, here’s a table of the top 9 chatty RSEs in our Slack:

Table of top users in Slack

See you on Slack!

📣 Mark Your Calendars for USRSE’26! 📣

Save the date for USRSE’26: Advancing Science in the Age of AI

We’re thrilled to announce that USRSE’26 will be held at the San Jose Marriott from October 19-21, 2026 in San Jose, California, with the theme “Advancing Science in the Age of AI”.

General chairs have been appointed to lead each of the core committees for USRSE’26. These chairs have begun assembling sub‑teams from the pool of volunteers who expressed interest in supporting the respective areas. If you were not selected for a chair position, please stay tuned, as chairs reach out for volunteers for these committee positions.

What’s next?

  • Call for Proposals: Submit your work via papers, short talks, BoFs, workshops, or posters. View More
  • Call for Reviewers: Play a key role in creating a dynamic and varied technical program that will appeal to conference attendees from all RSE backgrounds. Apply to Review
  • Committee Formation: Sub‑teams will be formed shortly; be on the lookout for an email from a perspective committee chair with details.
  • Stay Informed: Regular updates will be posted at us-rse.org/usrse26. Please bookmark the page and check back frequently for the latest information.

Your continued involvement is essential to the success of USRSE’26. We look forward to collaborating with you to deliver a vibrant, inclusive, and impactful conference.

📧 Join Our Mailing List 📧

Want to stay updated on all things US-RSE? Join our mailing list to receive direct news about all US-RSE conferences. Sign up here.

💬 Have Questions? 💬

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the organizers at usrse26-conference@us-rse.org.

📅 Save the Date 📅

More details about the conference program, registration, and travel information will be coming your way in the months ahead. Stay tuned at us-rse.org/usrse26!

We’re looking forward to seeing you all in San Jose!

📝 From the Executive Desk… 📝

In March, I attended Capitol Hill coffee hours with Senator Dick Durbin and Senator Tammy Duckworth, where I had the opportunity to introduce the mission and growing impact of the US Research Software Engineer (US-RSE) Association and take an important step toward raising awareness of the critical role of research software in advancing U.S. science. In addition, I met with staff from Senator Alex Padilla for an in-depth discussion; they expressed strong interest and requested follow-up materials — both quantitative and qualitative data and insights — to better understand the needs and contributions of the RSE community. While these meetings may appear inconsequential, they’re seedlings for longer-term engagement between the RSE community and key stakeholders in Washington, DC, and we are encouraged by the fact that our message is starting to reach key audiences in government.

Sandra with Senators Duckworth & Durbin

Sandra with Senator Padilla Staff Member

🛞 Steering Committee Updates 🛞

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us in the newsletter, but the Steering Committee has been hard at work! Together with our Executive Director, we’ve have done considerable work to support planning of the USRSE’26 conference, including confirming the selection of a venue and reviewing preliminary cost estimations. We’ve also already started looking ahead to USRSE’27 and beyond. We’re developing a conference hosting application process to identify potential future conference locations and chairs farther in advance—more on that in coming months. Additionally, we discussed our policies on issuing statements related to government actions and current events, as well as on the use of AI notetakers during our virtual events, which culminated in an official recommendation delivered to the Code of Conduct Committee on the latter.

Following the cancellation of our planned January retreat due to a combination of weather and illness, the US-RSE Leadership team held two half-day virtual planning sessions in February, focused on increasing the sustainability of our annual conference and updating our governance model to reflect the growing size and responsibilities of our organization. We’re following this up with an in-person working session at the end of this month, where we’ll meet for two days in Chicago with the Executive Director in a concentrated effort to finalize our recommendations for governance model updates.

Screen capture of Steering Committee meeting on Zoom

🤝 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 June 30, 2026, 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

🗞️ Community News 🗞️

The US-RSE community is full of talented, brilliant people doing amazing work, and every so often, we capture the interactions and collaborations that make our community special on video! Here’s a YouTube video of a recent Education & Training Working Group meeting, where Andres Rios-Tascon presented his tutorial on Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) with GitHub Actions.

Watch this video on YouTube

Did you know that we have a community Code of Conduct? Anyone is able to view it in the #code_of_conduct Slack channel, under Files!

Community Calls

On March 12th, the US-RSE community got together to discuss Legacy Code: Horrors and Successes!

We heard stories from Keith, James, Brad, and more about some of the projects they’ve inherited and how they dealt with codebases with developers in absentia, cryptic comments and functions, and the different edge cases that can come up when handling them.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, May 14, 2026, 12:00PM EST. We hope to see you there!

👀 Interesting Events and Opportunities 👀

Have an event or opportunity you want to promote? Reach out on Slack in the #newsletters channel!

📚 Featured Reads, Videos, and Podcasts 📚

📑 Recent Publications

  • Chen, E. (2026). AI is threatening science jobs. Which ones are most at risk?, Nature 651(8104). Read the Article.

  • Chugunova, M., Harhoff, D., Hölzle, K.et al. (2026). Who uses AI in research, and for what? [Large-scale]{.nocase} survey evidence from Germany, Research Policy 55(2). Read the Article.

📇 Blog Posts, Videos, & Other Reads

  • Besser, S., Jensen, E., Katz, D.. How generative AI is shaping research ... | Open Research Europe, . Check it out.

  • Bort, J. (2026). A VC and some big-name programmers are trying to solve open source’s funding problem, permanently, . Check it out.

  • Claburn, T.. AI still doesn’t work very well in business, reckoning soon, . Check it out.

  • Claburn, T.. GitHub: We going to train on your data after all, . Check it out.

  • Ernst, N., Awon, A., Hingmire, S.et al. (2026). The Nature of Technical Debt in Research Software, . Read the Article.

  • Nesbitt, A. (2026). Guided Meditation for Developers, . Check it out.

  • OpenAI, . (2026). OpenAI to acquire Astral, . Check it out.

  • Stetskov, D. (2025). Claude Code’s Source: 3,167-Line Function, Regex Sentiment, . Check it out.

  • Stetskov, D. (2026). The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe, . Check it out.

  • Substack, .. Artificial Intelligence can Erase Technical Debt, . Check it out.

Did you read something interesting this week? Want to share your own publications in the community? Reach out on Slack in the #newsletters channel!

🏃 Get Involved! 🏃

US-RSE Working Groups:

🧑‍💼 Recent Job Postings 🧑‍💼

Other Job Boards

You can learn more about job boards in the #jobs Slack channel!

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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