• Daniel S. Katz’s latest blog identifies "Senior Level RSE Career Paths (with an s)", which was also presented as a talk at SeptembRSE.
  

ReSA is delighted to announce support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to establish the Research Software Funders Forum as a collaboration of funding organisations committed to supporting research software, and those who develop it, as fundamental and vital to research. The Funders Forum will create a formal mechanism for funders to share practices and consider how to address common challenges to achieve the significant cultural change needed across the research sector globally. ReSA will also utilise the resource materials that will be created to stimulate discussion at Funders Forum meetings to create publicly disseminated outputs that will assist in achieving the ReSA mission of bringing research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of the research software ecosystem.

The Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit, mission-driven grantmaking institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in four broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics; initiatives to increase the quality, equity, diversity, and inclusiveness of scientific institutions and the science workforce; projects to develop or leverage technology to empower research; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists.

Would you like to join a conversation on how research software engineering could be reframed to place diversity, equity, and inclusion as a central organising principle? ReSA is calling for expressions of interest in joining a workshop entitled “Vive la differénce - research software engineers”. This will be a hybrid event with an in-person element from 19-22 April 2022 at the Lorentz Centre in the Netherlands; and online events from March-May 2022 across different time zones. This workshop will bring together a wide range of stakeholders who have not previously collaborated, to analyse best practice and available data to identify both research opportunities and solutions to their own local challenges, to create an informal network of champions in this area.

There are two ways to become involved:

• Apply to participate in the workshop, which has a maximum of 55 participants. Participants can attend remotely or in-person. The deadline for submission is Friday 19 November 2021, and all applicants will be advised of the outcome in December.

• Sign up to the ReSA newsletter to hear more about the online public events from March-May 2022 that will be associated with the workshop, as more details become available.

The ReSA People Roadmap is a community consultation to map the landscape of research software community initiatives focused on people-themed issues, as part of ReSA’s mission is to bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of the research software ecosystem.

As part of the creation of the ReSA People Roadmap, 28 organisations, community initiatives and/or projects in the research software community were profiled to facilitate identification of opportunities for accelerating efforts to address major issues related to personnel challenges. The resulting ReSA People Roadmap Report aims to increase understanding on how to create an environment where research software personnel are recognised, have appropriate skill sets and access to inclusive communities, within policy and infrastructure environments that support their work. Initial outcomes from the  Roadmap were presented at the Workshop on Sustainable Software Sustainability (WoSSS) on 8 Oct by ReSA Director, Michelle Barker.

ReSA will host two webinars to further discuss this work. Registration is free, and recordings will be available afterwards:

• Session 1: 8 December, 20:30 UTC (convert to your timezone). Registration is free.

• Session 2 (repeat session): 9 December, 09:00 UTC (convert to your timezone). Registration is free.

• Calling all Software Engineers involved in the Australian research sector! The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is conducting a survey to help understand the scale and distribution of software engineering or development capability within research organisations in Australia. Closes 19 November.