Have you ever wondered if your shopping habits could be influenced? Do you buy the same groceries every week? Would extra information allow you to make informed choices when you do your online shop? Research IT helped a group of researchers who were trying to see if they could make consumers change their mind.

Following the success of the First Conference of Research Software Engineers, the Second Conference will be held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on the 7th-8th September 2017. The event will feature a lively, international mix of over 200 attendees and the call has now been issued for talks, posters, workshops and tutorials.

Research IT are launching a new series of sessions where you can discover more about Research IT, the skills and services that we offer and, importantly, how to include them in your grant proposals.

In the last few years members of Research IT have been helping in the campaign for the Research Councils to directly recognise and fund career paths via fellowships within a Research Software Engineering (RSE) role.

Jisc, in collaboration with The University of Sheffield, have organised a free workshop for all researchers interested and passionate about developing or using research software.

The organisers want to collate common problems and share experiences around managing and sharing software, as well as developing new solutions. There will be experts on hand to answer any questions and inform participants of available resources.

Are you wondering what an Research Software Engineer (RSE) is? When did the term first start being used or if you are one? Find out more in a brief history of RSEs from Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute.

The Collaborations Workshop 2017 (CW17) is the Software Sustainability Institute’s research software event of 2017. It brings together key members of the research software community to present, discuss, build, make, network and explore key and current areas of the research software landscape. Many RSE groups will have representatives attending.

A mobile phone app developed by Research IT has been hitting the headlines recently. Featured on ITV news and Granada Reports as well as in The Daily Mirror, the Manchester Evening News and local newspapers across the region, Linguasnapp is enabling researchers to identify the range of languages used in Manchester.

Our Research software engineers (RSEs) are helping researchers in the Centre for Musculoskeletal Research launch a tool for sharing best practice in study design and management. The Extant Study Catalogue will allow researchers at Manchester and further afield to share details of their study design, datasets and coding practices, with a view to developing a shared data dictionary that can be used to make studies more easily comparable.

We have recently welcomed two new members of staff to the Research IT team. Jim McGrath and David Mawdsley have both joined as Research Software Engineers.

Robert Haines from Research IT recently attended the Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 'Engineering Academic Software', co-organised by the Software Sustainability Institute's Manchester PI Carole Goble. The primary topics of discussion at the workshop were how to build the research software of the future and how to get credit for doing so.

Two members of Research IT are co-authors on a recently published paper in BMC Ecology. The paper describes the development and implementation of "BioVeL" - a virtual laboratory for data analysis and modelling in biodiversity science and ecology.