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.

From November, Research IT will be holding Drop-in sessions in different locations around campus. There is no booking required, just drop by to have a chat about any research-related IT problems you may have.

LinguaSnapp is a project to create multilingual landscape maps of cities round the world by crowdsourcing data from the public. Last year Research IT created a mobile app and web application for the project to focus on the city of Manchester.

Are you one of a growing number of people in academia who combine expertise in programming with an intricate understanding of research? If so then you are a research software engineer (RSE)! The inaugural conference of RSEs took place in Manchester in early September and the presentations are now available online along with many of the workshop training materials.

Research IT has been providing the SpiNNaker project with research software engineer (RSE) expertise to help them simulate billions of simple neurons in order to create brain inspired computing systems.

How should we build the research software of the future? This was the question under consideration at the Dagstuhl Perspective’s Workshop ‘Engineering Academic Software’, co-organised by the Software Sustainability Institute’s Manchester PI Carole Goble. Experts in the area from across the world spent an intensive week presenting, discussing, debating and writing, to define current problems in the field and determine how we could address them.