Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/RSE_schedule'

rkdarst · rkdarst · commit 5d6599b177cd · 2026-01-23T13:13:26.000+02:00
diff --git a/content/schedule.yaml b/content/schedule.yaml
@@ -26,6 +26,12 @@ templates:
       title: Break
       short: With coffee
 
+    - &registration
+      title: Arrival and registration
+      time: 11:30
+      location: main
+      short: Registration and lunch info
+
     - &lunch
       title: Lunch
       time: 12:00
@@ -40,14 +46,20 @@ templates:
 
     - &dinner
       title: Dinner
-      time: 19:00
+      time: 18:00
       location: other
       short: Self-organized
 
     - &session
       title: (session)
       location: main
-      #short: To be filled with submitted talks
+      short: Two talks
+
+
+    - &discussion
+      title: (discussion)
+      location: main
+      short: Discussion session
 
 
 schedule:
@@ -63,6 +75,7 @@ schedule:
     #  #
     #  #  newline
 
+    - <<: *registration
     - <<: *lunch
     - id: intro1
       time: 13:00
@@ -71,12 +84,53 @@ schedule:
       contributors: Samantha Wittke, Richard Darst
       abstract: >
         Introductory words.
-    - <<: *session
-      time: 13:10
+    - id: kamyar
+      time: 13:30
+      location: main
+      title: "Sharing GIS Tools Across Disciplines: Hard Choices, opportunities, and Trade-offs"
+      contributors: Kamyar Hasanzadeh
+      abstract: >
+          As GIS methods spread into interdisciplinary research, researchers are increasingly expected to package their workflows as usable software for others.
+          In practice, this is far from straightforward. This talk reflects on several common ways of sharing GIS tools—commercial extensions (e.g. ArcGIS toolboxes),
+          open-source plugins (QGIS), standalone desktop applications, web apps, and simply releasing code—and the challenges that come with each.
+          These include technical maintenance, licensing constraints, usability for non-GIS experts, reproducibility, institutional dependencies,
+          and long-term sustainability. Rather than advocating a single solution, the talk examines both the advantages and the challenges of each approach,
+          using these trade-offs as a starting point for discussion on how researchers and research software engineers can make more realistic and
+          context-aware decisions when sharing GIS methods for interdisciplinary use.
+    - id: ina
+      time: 13:30
+      location: main
+      title: "TargetCAT: When a Script Refuses to Stay Small"
+      contributors: Ina Pöhner, Rafael Lopes Almeida
+      abstract: >
+          Imagine a project where a handful of researchers all try to do the same thing - except everyone does it manually,
+          in their own way, and the one automated step crashes regularly due to poor error handling. Out of frustration with this fragile setup,
+          TargetCAT was born. What began as a small collection of personal scripts to manage and process data on potential drug targets refused to stay small.
+          It quietly turned into a research pipeline that enabled several publications and projects, while itself remaining far from ideal in many places.
+
+
+          In this talk, we use TargetCAT as a case study to explore how research software typically evolves in academic projects:
+          how it survives, grows, and gradually accumulates technical debt. We reflect on familiar patterns such as ad‑hoc workflows,
+          "ghost development" carried out outside funded time, and feature creep driven by scientific needs without corresponding resources.
+          Along the way, the story touches on identity challenges faced by researchers whose work is effectively research software engineering,
+          but is assessed through publication‑centred metrics.
+
+
+          The second half of the talk turns to a reboot of TargetCAT as an open‑source pipeline for an academic–industry collaboration.
+          In this part, we share how earlier missteps and constraints, together with a fresh developer perspective and a conscious commitment to
+          RSE practices from the outset, are shaping its second life. We conclude by teasing lessons learned and opening a discussion on
+          how academic projects might better plan, fund, and recognise software work - and how this could support more sustainable, RSE‑centric career paths.
     - <<: *break
       time: 14:30
-    - <<: *session
-      time: 14:45
+    - <<: *discussion
+      time: 15:00
+    - id: poster
+      time: 16:00
+      location: main
+      title: "poster session"
+      contributors: Luca Ferranti
+      abstract: >
+        TBD
     - <<: *end
 
     - <<: *dinner
@@ -93,19 +147,60 @@ schedule:
     #  #
     #  #  newline
 
-    - <<: *session
-      time: 9:00
-    - <<: *break
-      time: 10:30
-    - <<: *session
-      time: 10:45
     - id: rse-talk
       title: RSE talk
-      time: 11:15
+      time: 9:30
+      location: main
+      contributors: Jeremy Cohen
+      abstract: >
+        Jeremy Cohen is an Advanced Research Fellow in the Department of Computing and Director of Research Software Engineering Strategy at Imperial College London.
+        He has been involved in the Research Software Engineering community since the early days and held a research software development role in a research group
+        prior to the existence of the “RSE" term. He has a PhD in Computing from Imperial and held one of the 5-year Research Software Engineering Fellowships (from 2018)
+        that were funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Jeremy is currently involved in a set of different grants relating to RSE and
+        the wider “digital Research Technical Professionals” (dRTP) space that’s developing in the UK to recognise not just RSEs but also research data and
+        research computing infrastructure professionals. He is the PI of STEP-UP (https://step-up.ac.uk), an EPSRC-funded Strategic Technical Platform with a regional focus
+        on developing skills, community and career pathways for dRTPs.
+
+
+        In his talk, Jeremy will discuss how Research Software Engineering has developed within the UK. He will highlight various challenges and opportunities around
+        developing skills and career pathways for RSEs. He will then look at how the RSE community is expanding to represent a wider group of dRTPs in a range of
+        technical roles who provide vital contributions to support and undertake modern digital research.
+    - <<: *break
+      time: 10:30
+    - id: julia
+      time: 11:00
       location: main
-      #contributors: Name, Name
-      description: >
-        TBA.
+      title: "Towards FAIR file formats: a case example with Origin & Python"
+      contributors: Julia Niskanen
+      abstract: >
+          Open science and FAIR principles have become increasingly important in the last decade.
+          However, the implementation of Interoperability is sometimes challenged by established software and analytical practices.
+          One example of such established software is Origin (OriginLab Corporation, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA),
+          an analysis software with various features involving graphing, statistical operations, and data processing and transformation.
+          Origin output files are comprehensive and can contain entire analysis pipelines; however, the file format (.opju) is proprietary,
+          the software is restricted to Windows and requires a paid license to access all features, and there is no easy option to export
+          all the contents of the file to other formats. Together, these factors impede the implementation of Interoperability.
+          To overcome these obstacles, I have developed a lightweight Python tool, convert-opju, that can be run within Origin to quickly and systematically export graphs,
+          images, workbooks, matrices and notes to open file formats. While not all objects of the .opju file are currently included,
+          converting the major objects to open formats is a notable improvement to Interoperability. Convert-opju is freely available (MIT License) on Github and Zenodo.
+    - id: frankie
+      time: 11:00
+      location: main
+      title: "Realization: it's SymPy"
+      contributors: Frankie Robertson
+      abstract: >
+          SymPy looks nice, but it's not a real CAS... is it?
+          In this presentation I hope to show that as well as SymPy scaling down, SymPy is quite a capable CAS for helping to tackle real world problems we might encounter as RSEs.
+          The main content of the presentation is a case study of how SymPy has been a useful tool during my first project as an RSE, working on a simulation of a mass spectrometer,
+          both as a tool for ad-hoc tool enabling DRY and --- using more of its power --- to help design more efficient numerical sampling code.
+          So next time you have some maths to wrangle, I say: "Go on: treat yourself!" (to SymPy)
+    - id: outro1
+      time: 11:45
+      location: main
+      title: RSE meetup wrapup
+      contributors: Samantha Wittke, Richard Darst
+      abstract: >
+        Closing words.
 
     - <<: *lunch
 
@@ -243,6 +338,7 @@ schedule:
         If there is no explicit requests, it is safe to assume this
         won't happen.
 
+
         How can universities get infrastructure funding for local
         Research Software Engineer support.  How can they work together?
         This is a discussion, taking into account everything we have
