Seminar abstract:
Software has become a major driver for research with over 90% of researchers answering surveys that they use software for their research and over 65% expressing that they even could not do their research without software. Science gateways are a subgroup of research software and are software frameworks for creating collaborative web portals or dashboards that support sharing of data, tools, simulations and/or workflows while hiding complex computing and data infrastructure as far as desired. This way, researchers can focus on their research questions instead of becoming acquainted to technical details. A plethora of libraries and packages have been developed enabling significant discoveries such as the gravitational waves from colliding black holes and the analyses of DNA from Next-Generation Sequencing technologies. While these discoveries are recognized world-wide for their importance, the required software or the people creating and maintaining the software to achieve them, rarely get the same recognition.
US-RSE (US Research Software Engineers Association) is working on achieving a cultural change in academia in the US to increase incentives for people being in this line of work and adapt the typical traditional academic value system with bringing in funding and publication of manuscripts. SGX3 is the NSF Center of Excellence for Science Gateways serving the science gateway community from users to providers to developers. Mature science gateway frameworks enable developers to re-use building blocks for typical tasks such as invoking simulations or sharing data. This way, a ramp up of a science gateway can be more efficient and developers can focus on the unique aspects of a science gateway that is tailored to a specific community. The presentation will go into detail for the role of research software in research and research computing and activities and opportunities US-RSE and SGX3 offer that benefit researchers and research software engineers.
Speaker Bio:
Sandra Gesing is the inaugural Executive Director of the US Research Software Engineer Association and a Senior Researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Her research focuses on science gateways, computational workflows as well as distributed and parallel computing. She is especially interested in sustainability of research software, usability of computational methods and reproducibility of research results. Sustainability of research software has many facets and she advocates for improving career paths for research software engineers and facilitators and for incentivizing their work via means beyond the traditional academic rewarding system.
Before her positions at US-RSE and SDSC, she was a senior research scientist at the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), University of Illinois System, Chicago and she was an associate research professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. Before she moved to the US, she was a research associate at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Additionally, she has perennial experience as a project manager and system developer in industry in the US and Germany. As head of a system programmer group, she has long-term software projects. She received her Master’s degree in computer science from extramural studies at the FernUniversität Hagen and her PhD in computer science from the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Yeah so yeah I come with two heads on and I’m only since November 23 I’m the um executive director of the US research sare engineer Association and I’m a senior researcher also since November the San Diego super computer center I’m for over 10 years now in the Uso and I’m a researcher and
Science gate Bas distributed computing and so I’m talking about accelerators of research and by research do engineers and science gate creators are so important for computational research and only the same headline only to show I show my to head also you see in the background when you see this
Light it goes it will be around science Pap otherwise it’s around research software engineers is the sound okay my laptop says something I should pull up the sound oh no that goes by System here okay okay with that research software engineers and we talk about them um so
There was from colleagues of mine they did a survey and if you see that is the US and the UK and they are researchers whether they use research software or whether they can’t continue without and if you look for the US 95% use research software 63% cannot do
Their research without but we have L of care path in the US for research ster engineers and lack of incentive for them to stay in Academia and National so and there certain different aspects around research software and research software Eng engineering when we talk about that we don’t have to forget about reproducibility and reproducability means really obtaining consistent computational results using same input computational step method code on conditions of analyzes but this might be some of you really experience
More in f um so that’s the professor don’t worry you don’t have to start over your code from scratch you can reuse software that the previous person on the project wrote several years ago are the instruction for how to use it I don’t it’s a code command not there who
Knows this is going to be painful isn’t it just I think that is what many people experience in research there’s no real process software engineering process giving it further to people ability is a big topic that’s one of the steps usability so if you look at software and
Imagine researchers and I will start a Mia in a moment imagine yeah you in biology or you are in physics or you know in Geo physical sciences you don’t want to know every Integrity detail of all the research software complex infrastructure and everything so it should be
Usable so the research sof and usability I really like the the books from Steve group like don’t make me think it’s usability really just means that making sure that something works well without getting everyone hopelessly frustrated I found this other thing on the web the user interface is like a joke if you
Have to explain it it’s not that good so usability is important as research sare interoperability you all know we work with so many different aspects of research software software in our lives so we want results to be also different system we want that the different system can communicate with each other can
Execute programs can transfer data among various functional units that is really interoperability so what is a research software engineer so I had some aspects I talked about some aspect what I think is important for research software so what is now a research software engineer and I like these two
Definitions one is from the US research software engineer Association USR the other one from from from the UK from the Society of research software engineering and it’s really about we we talk about that it includes researchers who spent significant amount of time on programming full-time research software Engineers writing
Cach some people are in between and also the people who lead teams of research sare Engineers are are La so if you look at the US research softare Engineers Association really the movement and term was born in the UK in 2012 there was a collaboration workshop and from then research software ination
Form in the UK the real r one and since 2019 there a society of research s engineering and this is a picture by the way made by the German research sine Association and one of the meetings a nice it’s an international movement and this was 2013 there was the formation in the UK
Now it looks like this 11 years further we have us we have the German R the Belgium the Nordic a Africa um Australia New Zealand Asia and of course still the one in the UK and in the Netherlands that looks really it’s a worldwide movement so what do we want what is our
Mission it’s about Community having a community because it’s a non-traditional academic career path if people stay in Academia and to have a professional Community to share knowledge connections resources to really have where you belong to we want to advocate for research stuff Engineers because often they they incentives is not
Highlighting how critical their role is how valuable research software is and also how hard it is to to be recognized by it if you’re not a PhD if you are not doing the traditional from PhD to postor to faculty so that that is important have a career path resources so we have information
Material really training possibilities and under the aspect of diversity equity and inclusion because also between research software Engineers it’s still highly a white male community so it’s important to promote and encourage and improve the diversity so if you look at the membership growth we are really very
Happy I me at the beginning you can see took a little bit a while from 2018 that but right now we are over 2,100 members and we started this 20 so that that is cool and that is mostly because of all our activities so there are our
Members and yes there are members in haai you see it so members are also joined from Hawaii so we have members from all over the world and really in the US we are missing out on a few few States but Hai and Alaska have have members from
Here so what are the resources what can can you work with so we we have a website we have newsletters we have a slack work space so slack is very active at us so that is where most of the yeah interaction happens especially the our most growth did take place during the
Pandemic the pandemic is not fully over but there have now couple of more in person events but SL really established at the main um yeah communication space for USR so LinkedIn Twitter masteron so we have a drop board I’m really still very happy the drop board
Is very active and we had a couple of people who wrote us like because of your job Bard I found a job or because of the job Bard we found someone who’s fitting for our team this is really cool we have a YouTube channel there you can find different things um from Community
Cards for example so all the community courses in they have some monthly and they’re alternating between um Thursdays and Friday that that we hope that people get a chance maybe to once in a while to attend or often and you see the different topics you can suggest topics we happy about
That and discuss what you think would be important for you or for for the topic so we have a funer speaker series so our next funer speaker series is next week and we will have a speaker from The Institute of Museum of services and libraries um imls Institute of Museum and Library
Services and we have a the speaker series a media Club media Club is also next week they have Education and Training speaker series and we have conference panels both Workshop Outreach so please don’t be shy can contact us we have working groups so from Awards to code of conduct and
Moderation diversity and equity and inclusion you see different topics also on technicals stuff like python we have user experience websites Affinity groups Regional groups so if you are interested to make for example a regional group in Hawaii I’m happy to support you here to you know meet and this this
Interested people here we published um a career guide together with the academic data science Alliance has over 100 Pages it talks about how to hire manage and retain data scientists and research software Engineers we have a shorter version about in collaboration with it e computer Society more like a brochure
How to create a career path and the career as research software engineer so since last year we have a new fiscal sponsor Community initiative so that means we are a nonprofit and it comes to taxes we are independent of a university now um and that provides support for legal
Servative for HR so that we are with them meant that I could have a position as executive director and that we can have a position for a community manager who we get higher jobs also in December so we are still navigating the nonprofit landscape so and we have really poorly
Volunteer effort until last year and then we get the grch of almost 800,000 that pays for the next two years the salary of the community manager and for me and the idea is really to make USR like a real Association sustainable and help volunteers who have support and this activities initiatives have
Organizational tools because we got really to the limit of this volunteers we don’t want our members to bur out because it’s and know they need to do so much So community and my responsibility is final sustainability of the organization so I have to the ground run I have one year and 10 months left so activities and initiatives for example we have conference we have Community FS so that’s exciting program also so for examp the Community Fund the
Idea is that we can say you can apply for something between ,000 um you know that’s ability you support you support project or Workshop sor it’s just speaking into your computer course yeah and then we should be able to thank you is this better you get a thumbs up okay so I
Mostly gave a little bit more information than on the slides I I hope you you got most of it so yeah the next deadline by the way is March 31st I’m sorry I Ed the slide in directly in the week before Christmas and I so yeah there still
December so let me okay and yeah we for example we did a diversity expert and inclusion Consulting for me and for some of the community members we have still to learn a lot there we have a code of conduct response training you can get swag yeah
And tools and software to to make USR e more effective should I move myself Now do you hear me again okay cool so we had our first Conference in October um in Chicago I was a general chair it was sold out we had booked a room for 250 participants and we got sold out we had technical program tracks we had um four tutorials
Three workshops you see really A diversity of of different formats um additional program features well we had Keynotes we had a funding agency panel student program yeah different and we have a MCAT so because I gave at the welcome speech that we a little bit a community of
Unicorns every yeah we got really positive feedback on the Unicorn we got for people left oh unicorn and I won’t go through all the name only showing special thanks really many many people contributed that time to help and we had fantastic sponsors from the slan foundation for on really conference
Sponsors from Google to Princeton to to Amazon it yeah we we were very happy to get so many sponsors the next one by the way will be in Aly and this has a topic yesterday to today and tomorrow in October this year so if you want to come to the
Mainland and then in October I you and yeah I was personally new never in New Mexico I’m looking forward to it and the week before the conference it’s an international balloon F so come a little bit early and by the way if you don’t know
It but breaking bads by the way it was also created everyone like of course I will Cy that is Breaking Bad so the general chairs and you see again a lot of volunteers we are yeah we are a happy community of a lot of volunteers so if you are
Interested to get also involved as I said also there other possibilities allies and and there are plenty ways to stay informed on the website and yeah so with that so really a little bit more about the because this is also to show you what we try to do for sustainability of
Research software and change the culture in in Academia at National Labs we want a smooth transition between the full volunteer organization to having now staff this Al Community initiatives we are setting priorities with funding and staff gos we want to support and enable so this is steering committee
Good I’m a little bit with two heads again I was steering committee member until the end of October so I’m in the transition myself um yeah and we are happy to get feedback and we have to have Financial sustainability so we need to I need to look into proposals and grants and one
Is for medium and large organization since we are now a nonprofit We have grants in form of cash or in kind donations maybe membership fees more you know we have such a great community and we want to grow it further so that that is a topic we are very
Careful with and maybe we get a usrc Brand store and have many many unicorns to sell then yeah so here had different steps but I won’t go through everything in so we want to have an industrial Advisory Board we have focus groups planned for really looking into
Membership Fe want to you know I’m setting up meetings with this group of leaders of non-traditional organizations so people know also or want to join contact me and we have marketing plan really by doaly serving institution community colleges the main researchers and RC who who don’t know yet that there e or think
There are not so that would be now also really the overarching goals are changing academic culture keeping the welcoming and sustainable environment and keeps the grassroot character with that I make a break for a moment and let me bring up some mentimeter sorry I have to jump into my browser
Because I plan to not talk alone the whole time but give you a chance to interact so you might have heard about mes or mentimeter.com and I give you in a moment the questions oh it’s a little bit loading slowly ah I’m using the intern WiFi from my
Phone this might be not might not work give me a moment it’s a little bit slow do you have a guest account on the University here that I can use fast or no yeah no no no not for mimer it’s for for the Wi-Fi yes okay let me my something somehow has a
Do you hear me again all good okay so if you put in if you go to m.com and then use this code 89 21 6273 would be great if you do that and answer this question it should bring up a question you can do it on your laptop or or your phone
And what is your role in research are you a researcher or faculty a student a software developer leadership of University administrator librarian none of the above and you can answer several times if you say oh I’m faculty but I’m also a software developer I’m an administrator and Leadership of
University I’m a librarian and a student so that yeah I like it I like when the little BS are flying in none of the above administrator so we have a quite distri quite a distribution between the different roads that okayy I give it another time a little bit okay so research faculty and
Software developer are leading the numbers this is a great distribution okay so the next question would be this one do you use research software for your research are you someone who is using or even if you a developer just say yes to the special since you use research stuff
Yeah even if it’s not maybe directly your own research but you’re in that field so we have already four answering yes not sure okay is it research software is it normal software yeah I I can see that or saying oh I don’t really do research but I’m administrator or librarian yeah okay very
Cool can you do your research without research software so this is really for the researchers who say okay I have to develop my own but you know um yes partially oh no not sure I’m I’m in a different role so partially okay no that is expected but I I would see
Here partially or no because we had software developers and research leading the numbers before four so perly know I would expect that L days research needs normally some absolutely so before I started to talk today about USR and research software Engineers have you heard about research software Engineers before before I did
Talk the last 25 minutes about it great to have yes one no three yes love it no so I hope I have two who who are really enthusiastic now about research software engineering and research Stu there very cool so 4 to two so my next question because that is
The second part of the talk have you heard about science gate before except for the title of my talk okay no yes more NOS I can see that so we are 4 to one here so that is good because then not sure is also great
Because then I can give you the intro to science C now and have my second hat on as a senior researcher in science gateways this is now a little bit of tough question if you haven’t done too much with sustainability of research software but what is your guess how do the concepts below
Contribute to sustainability of research software economic sustainability sustainability of career path of developers usability reproducibility environmental sustainability so you know how much do they contribute are they all really important which is what what do you think are the most important aspects to make research software really sustainable so that
Research software can be still you know how we use it today can be used in a year or two and um great results so yeah so we have usability leading we producibility and economic sustainability yeah usability and economic sustainability absolutely reproducibility is a big Topic in sustainability of research
Software and sustainability of career PA and developers yes I totally agree with you I think usability is a big topic of sustainability of research software and one of the most important ones with that this was the last question and we are going back to my Presentation let me get some Zoom here out of the way okay so this is why I wanted to show you so if you quite a few of you haven’t heard about science gateways yet you have havian science gateways so this is a iy way I hope I
Say it’s the correct way uh way science Gateway and it’s it is into water quality data it shows that to to users it can start simulations it is developed by by Sean Cleveland and the team or you could be interested let me oh sorry in volcano
Research that is also near to your heart I would assume so that is a a science Gateway that is has data about volcano research about risk mitigation about all researchers coming together online to exchange knowledge about volcanos and here’s another um Gateway also developed by Sean Cleveland and and the team about
Microbiome data so you can see the topics are very different science gateways are there to really make the life of researcher easier who want to use complex infrastructures so if you and this is research Computing you know if you look look really at at today’s research questions yes today’s research question
We could not even address 20 years ago now we have all these data and we have new hardware and software and a lot of skills required to do all this then we have really the need for openness and reproducibility um driv yeah policy questions and a lot of projects are
Nowadays interdisciplinary it’s not one researcher sitting alone in a room and trying to solve a Ser normally we have very interdisciplinary projects nowadays and we want the opportunity to integrate research with teaching on the better Workforce preparation and that is where you need end to end Solutions where people can
Work as teams together and you have access to all these different resources and data um that leads us to science Gator so yeah let’s let’s look at this at the landscape they Le instruments and by the way the little instrument on the hand there that is the the smallest nection sequencing machine
In the world I’ve seen that in the UK in a lab that that did not let me go out of the lab but I had it on my hand um we have webbi agile Frameworks we have all these distributed and Computing infrastructure highs speeded networks and we have
Research software and on the other hand all all these data and comput in this problems and the researcher in the middle the ones who are not directly you know and computational science so we need science gateways we need something that is very usable to make a little bit sad looking researchers happy researchers
So and that is what we do with science gateways what we learned from the last two decades is so we have um different Technologies so and it started with many different ones but few really established themselves that they are sustainable and mature and they are widely used complete Frameworks like app
Zero Galaxy global statea portal you might have heard about them then restful apis and support of multiple programming languages like Tais for example the two two hav and science gapes I did show you will develop with stus we have reused interface implementations and also science gate
Phas as a service and really the Lessons Learned is there should be really technology agnostic solutions that or solutions that use standards or it delivers a complete solution and Community engagement is key and the picture you see here is a use over 24 hours of a solution the H zero
Worldwide and it’s it’s yeah on almost every continent I think only Antarctica is not included on this so we look at the typical life cycle of a science Gateway project mostly they start oh there’s an initi idea and you get funding and then there’s all this Gateway planning and design ramp up active
Operation and the typical academic situation funing HS so and then you have a community there and you want to gather retirements again and have maybe additional funding or you have to ramp down because it costs to have a science Gateway maintenance cost and you know new development just cost so therefore the
Science gages Community Institute was funded so over seven years so we supported that was expertise on demand like for example usability advice sustainability advice um we had longer term support engagements so we could support with up to half a year of a developer support you would get the software developer for
Your project we worked on sofware disability for science gateways the com and part of the community engagement exchange I’m leading that area and we have Workforce Development so this project and done for seven years and now it morphed into both are existed but I explain it
Better um the sgx 3 is a center of excellence for science gateways so we got less funding and we restructured our services but we still have for example the Community Conference series we have direct Outreach we have the usability consultancy we can offer we have a focus week Focus week is a
Sustainability training of a week or shorter engagement we have technical consultancy we can help with the design we canot land you for half a year developer anymore that’s um Community Partnerships we have faculty training so a Gateway Central around the topics really developing the workforce growing a diverse Community
Envisioning the Futures our blueprint factories I think are really exciting topic but I encourage you also to work with us and the difference between sgx 3 and sgci is sgx 3 we are still offering a lot of services as I said with technology advice evaluation Gap
Analytics we have also if you you can do things CLI onund it if you add us for example to your proposals you can do something like a usability evaluation and design engagement over three months at the moment we can do it with you know we are funded for three calendar months
Per project so they’re different if you would be interested I’m happy to go more into detail so blueprint factories the idea is if we need to have something in five to 10 years we need to think about the technology now and these blueprint factories are 18 months and they look directly into what
What do we need to know about that area and what do we need to have developed in in five years and we are looking not surprisingly probably for everyone in Ai and science gateways the blueprint Factory and we have a sustainability blueprint Factory to really look what do
We need what what is the community what what is the next step for science gateways in the next five years you have a rising staff program on the one hand students who are having done internships with us or ha hackers s faculty integrating science gateways as no Concept in their classes
Or science Gateway creators uh research software Engineers who are incorporating Cutting Edge technology so if you feel addressed by any of these topics you can you know work on a rising starward for you the faculty opportunities because faculty can work as a multiplier for students so if if
They really sell the topics of Science gapes of research software engineering the students learn about it directly during being undergrad where it’s our graduates and we can we give also workshops throughout the year for faculty and heckerson so they different so the G at gateways 2023 we had the faculty hack
For example with different teams and they showed their results in in a poster session then but you can see here so I we have a science gate L catalog so I put in as preparation for this talk volano do I find anything about volano and it found the VAB the
One I did show the picture about that that there’s a science gate phe to really uh yeah make collaboration on volcanology Research easier and risk mitigation so if if you would like to find child gateways for examples yeah contact me or or search in this Catal and it will Mor into a Gateway
Central to make it more interactive at the moment you can search you can sought for topics but we want to make it really U more to receive more personalized recommendation because at the moment we have over 600 science gateways in there and to find what is fitting for you needs a more personalized
Approach we have sx3 on the road so I lead that area for example I gave a talk last week at hick and I give a talk now so that is my Outreach part of going to different conferences but also giving online talks going to different domains
So if you have ideas for me what kind of domains to address I’m happy to give talks the focus week is the sustainability training I shortly talked about and you learn about what are your audiences what are your key stakeholders you know marketing tactics and tools goal setting value proposition
For your project I know being myself a researcher as sounds first like huh but we are in that business if we want to keep our project sustain aable we we need to learn sustainability measures we have a group of Gateway ambassadors and it’s really they’re learning from peers and sharing
Information and um I like we have the Gateway Ambassador group are from very different fields from Humanities to social scientist to biologist to yeah technicians and software research software engineers and I like like this little um yeah graphic about it like we like to bring together people from
Radically different fields and wait for the friction to produce heat light and Magic sometimes it takes a while and so we I have uh or we have this story book we have supported over 200 project with different topics and um one is online I have it
Also a hard copy here so so one is maybe still left when you come the next time and you can pick it up here um and with that thank you for your attention any question so I know it was maybe a lot of information real the one
Sorry oh yeah the sorry sorry sorry so I I repeat the question so I was asked whether I could talk a little bit about Community engagement what are key strategies and also for de for diversity equity and inclusion so for community outreach it is always a mixture of different measures and also how
Communities react on it for example us R people are highly active on slack it is really every day we tried the same with the science gate community somehow people don’t take that up people prefer the direct Outreach with email on newsletters so they react on newsletter
We have also newsletters now again at us we had a break a little bit in between um because it was done by volunteers and I had no time to yeah have a community manager now so I I think it’s a mixture and that should be probably always a mixture of
Something like newsletters or you know just in general something always a website always some social media but also in that regard we tried not to be on too many platforms because if you they’re not active on all of them them it just does look sad so focusing on
Social media maybe on two one or two you you can be really active is probably good direct Outreach is needed and also for example we work at um USR at the moment how to reach the people better are in domains who don’t know about research software Engineers because it it’s it’s totally clear
Engineering is not for everyone interesting but it could help their research so and we have the same with science gapes how to make them domain researchers really hear about us because we make the solutions for especially the ones who are not so interested to know or so it needs
Really we are doing some research at the moment how to reach out to so on our list are also at the moment minority serving institutions because they have often less support structures in in the administration and we can support them we we can the moment we have with for
Example with the science gate based Institute we have the funding that we can say oh we can have Kia project with usability strategies so if if there would be this one thing the one recipe that work work for every Community I would be happy to share it
No I I also had to learn SL works here with usrc FL is really not very active of in the science gateways Community but they love the newsletters they give us feedback on that so yeah what you have to find out for your community what their preferred messages
Are for both communities a face-to-face conference is very received we really have seen that that it’s I mean we were sold out the first conference it made me a little bit nervous to be the first general chair of the first ever USR conference great we were sold out everything worked
Out the gateways conference we talked with the community who was at um the Gateway conference in 2022 in Diego whether you know they liked to to be maybe also some virtual again no no no face to face we had enough vir in 2020 and 2021 so I think people start not
Everyone what did I do am I still okay okay this is from any particular Gateway Science yes so for bioinformatics I can we have an internship for students if it’s about students in this summer with with tech if that is interesting the specific gateways I can
If he wants to leave his um email address I can send him a list of bioinformatic gateways he might have heard about the science Gateway Galaxy it has a lot of biomedical science gateways um so tools so it depends with Al genomics which field in bioinformatics but um yeah there are
Quite a few out there I can send list of if he’s interested in specific topics um and happy to you know go through specific gateways also online I mean I’m also happy to be invited to Honolulu again but um yeah maybe one year we could
Plan um so normally I try to come for Hicks in January maybe we can do a workshop on science gate Bas or something um yeah but bioinformatics bioinformatics are by the way the ones who picked up science gateways um the most from all domains let me look also at the
Chat oh cool I will copy the email address research office unities are definitely also always available in bioinformatics and science G um I come back for a moment to the Dei question uh so we ourselves still have to learn a lot so what we do for example
We have a DI speaker series where we invite people who are for specific topics experts and they’re online so everyone can join who’s interested you can just join for free on on the USR website and then you can get the news when the speaker series are
So I got myself training um on Code of Conduct response and also about thei because I think I still don’t know enough there’s always something to learn so yeah we we learn at the moment together to improve the situation he any further question so thank you so much I hope you enjoyed
It and please reach out if anything science gateways or research software engineering I’m happy To