The inaugural conference from the US-RSE Association just wrapped up in Chicago! Somewhat paradoxically, the gathering felt like a culmination and a new beginning all at once. It was the culmination of years of effort tracing back to 2017 when earnest discussions towards organizing the US-RSE began. Some RSEs who had collaborated online for years finally got to meet in person for the first time! It’s also a new beginning: the US-RSE has “grown up,” in a sense, and we hope this conference is the first of many more to come in the United States.
The conference theme was “Software-Enabled Discovery and Beyond.” Participants from academia, industry, government labs, and other research institutions across the country came together to discuss topics like software-driven discovery and scholarship, software technology trends, software engineering best practices, community engagement, training resources, and the ongoing quest to build and grow the RSE profession.
Our RSE Group sent a handful of representatives and contributed the following content to the conference’s technical program:
- INnovative Training Enabled by a Research Software Engineering Community of Trainers (INTERSECT) – Ian Cosden and Jeffrey Carver (talk)
- Princeton University’s RSE Summer Internship and Fellowship Programs – Joel Bretheim, Ian Cosden, Peter Elmer, Garrett Wright, Colin Swaney, Abhishek Biswas, Henry Schreiner, Kilian Lieret, and Vineet Bansal (talk)
It was gratifying to see the RSE community in the US come together in this way and collaboratively make our first ever conference a resounding success. On the final day of the conference, we learned it will indeed return next year and it will be hosted in Albuquerque!