As part of the Data Science Research Partnership between BBC R&D and the University of Manchester, one of our research software engineers (RSE), Josh Woodcock, spent 3 months working with BBC R&D to develop a way to visualise click data from an internal trial of the Cook-Along Kitchen Experience (CAKE). Involved in the project were Jonathan Carlton (PhD student with BBC R&D and University of Manchester), Andy Brown (BBC R&D), John Keane and Caroline Jay (University of Manchester).

It may be the summer but our team is as busy as ever! David Mawdsley (Research Software Engineer) is putting together a new workshop on Shiny. This is an R package that makes it easy to make interactive web apps using R.

Thanks to a collaboration between the Multilingual Manchester research unit and the University’s Research IT group, students and citizens in Saint Petersburg will now have access to a Russian version of LinguaSnapp - The University of Manchester’s mobile app for documenting language landscapes.

Research IT staff will be teaching and assisting on a Software Carpentry Workshop in May which aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. The workshop is free to post-graduate students and employees of the University of Manchester.

Earlier this month, Research IT provided training for the University's Regenerative Medicine Centre for Doctoral Training. The training was arranged by the Software Sustainability Institute, and was a two day Software Carpentry workshop. The instructors were Mike Jackson from EPCC at the University of Edinburgh and David Mawdsley from Research IT.

One of our research software engineers (RSE), Rob Dunne, has been embedded in a team working to facilitate decision-making for cancer patients who may benefit from experimental treatments in early clinical trials.

Two of our Research IT experts gave a presentation at the recent “R at University of Manchester” (R.U.M.), an R User group open to all staff and students using R at The University of Manchester with regular meetings on the first Monday of each month.

Have you heard of Software Carpentry (SWC) and Data Carpentry (DC)? Both organisations have the aim of upskilling researchers so they can upgrade their computational and programming skills and their data analysis skills respectively through a series of workshops and “train the trainer” events.

Did you know that there is a R users group at the University of Manchester? "R at University of Manchester" (R.U.M.), is an R User group open to all staff and students using R at The University of Manchester with regular meetings on the first Monday of each month.

Each semester CodeFirst runs free community courses aimed to provide women with technical and digital skills. The courses are taught by volunteer instructors all across the country and this October they are coming to the University of Manchester.

They are looking for a diverse range of enthusiastic volunteer instructors for the upcoming autumn sessions. Instructors come from a variety of cultural and coding backgrounds, and include computer science/technical postgraduates, company based professionals, freelance developers, and university staff. All instructors work on a voluntary basis.

Wolfram Research in conjunction with Research IT, is hosting a 3 day, free summer workshop for researchers from across the N8 universities, including Manchester, on the 27^th – 29^th June.

Software is often a critical component of scientific research. It can be part of the academic research methods used to produce research results, or it may be the actual academic research result. Software, however, has rarely been considered to be a citable artefact in its own right. With the advent of open-source software, artefact evaluation committees of conferences, and journals that include source code and running systems as part of the published supporting material, it is expected that software will increasingly be recognized as part of the academic process. It is therefore essential that the quality and sustainability of this software is accounted for.