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The RSE, autonomy and guidelines for management to increase innovation

Dr Joanna Leng, Dr Phillip Brooker and Emeritus Prof Wes Sharrock, have put together, from their theoretical and practical experience, a set of potentially fruitful areas to consider for the management of RSE and other associated professionals practices that, they believe, will increase innovation.
Technology background red and blue color, circuit board and code. 3d Illustration

The full diversity of the RSE Role

To better understand the current state and problem of RSE, it would be useful to have a clearer understanding of what kind(s) of work are currently identified as such, whether they comprise a uniform kind of work or feature diverse subgroupings with differentiated practices involving perhaps, dominant and minority groups.

Do research software engineers have research methods?

Dr Joanna Leng, School of Computing, University of Leeds, Dr Phillip Brooker, School of Sociology, University of Liverpool and Emeritus Prof Wes Sharrock, School of Sociology, University of Manchester, all from the UK, ponder if Research Software Engineers have research methods, plus why today, we have increasingly more types of academic research institutions and organisations.
Figure 1: Loosely based on the Abernathy-Utterback representation of the innovation pipeline of research software delivery models. Each curve is a model taken from experience and anecdotal evidence. Key: a,) The first stored memory computer is created b,) Grace Hopper and others develop programming languages and numerical methods c,) Teams of mathematicians develop research software, e.g., Dorothy Vaughan see Disney’s film Hidden Figures d,) Open source repository of numerical methods on punch cards collected from academic researchers by Rutherford Appleton Labs as a funding requirement e,) JISC funds research software development in faculty and IT services at universities where funding is along computing expertise, e.g., HPC, visualisation f,) eScience is funding initially to natural and then to social science for centralised teams funding is along research council remit g,) centralised generalised RSE teams are promoted over other models funded by Universities, RSE identified as technicians and more women join the profession h,) slow steady adoption of RSE in national research facilities.

Computing: Paradigm shifts, adoption, new digital professionals rising

Dr Joanna Leng, School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK and Dr Phillip Brooker, School of Sociology, University of Liverpool, Emeritus and Prof Wes Sharrock, School of Sociology, University of Manchester, focus on computing: paradigm shifts, charting the adoption and the rise of new digital professions.
Fig 1: The Abernathy-Utterback curve represents the innovation pipeline in this case as it transitions through the production of two consecutive stable products. It has three phases: 1) the Fluid Phase, where flexibility is needed because of uncertainty in the product idea, the technology and the market and in this case, the needs of the research community; 2) the Transitional Phase, when the technology, the application and the customer’s needs are better understood until a ‘dominant design’ emerges; 3,) the Specific Phase the ‘dominant design’ shifts from being different to having good performance

FFEA software: Repeated early innovation

Dr Joanna Leng, Senior Research Software Engineering Fellow at the University of Leeds, discusses software with repeated early innovation using the example of the FFEA software.
Interior of big modern server room. 3d rendering illustration

The development of research software engineering as a profession

Dr Joanna Leng at the School of Computing explores Research Software Engineering (RSE) as an emerging profession, and how computing technology is core to many professions.
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Discussing early innovation software by example of the PERPL software

Dr Joanna Leng, School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK, presents a project from the fellowship, on the PERPL (pattern extraction from relative positions of localisations) software which analyses super-resolution light microscopy (SRLM) data.

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