October 2025 Newsletter
Welcome to Autumn and to our October Newsletter, where you get to meet your new trustees and find out about other events and opportunities from the community!
Headlines
Our main news includes the announcement of the new trustees and their roles following the voting at RSECon25.
Trustee Roles Assigned
The first meeting with the new trustees took place at the end of September. All trustees have now been assigned their roles and responsibilities. Have a look at our recently updated Governance page to find out more.
Reflections on the Hidden Cost Bursary at RSECon25
Laura Crawford from the Rosalind Franklin Institute shares her thoughts on the Hidden Cost bursary scheme that was available to attendees at RSECon25.
Community News & Events
We have some updates on some recent events, your last chance to apply for a big opportunity, and it’s the time of year when we celebrate our amazing community.
DisCouRSE Network+ Flexible Fund Round 1
Apply for up to £10k from the DisCouRSE Network+ to promote leadership training and career pathways for digital Research Technical Professionals like you! This first call has no specific focus areas: any proposals relevant to DisCouRSE’s aims are allowed – preparing the next generation of leaders and ensuring roles exist for them to lead within. We welcome applications that seek to expand on existing work, to kick-start activities that you are already thinking about, or to do “proof of concept” work to support larger proposals in future rounds. We anticipate funding 10-20 projects, which must be led by Digital Research Technical Professionals.
If you decide not to apply in this round, we will also need reviewers for applications, giving you an excellent insight into the process to inform a future application.
Submission deadline: Friday 14th November 2025, 16:00 GMT.
Digital Research Infrastructure & Training Hackathons
Friday 7 November, 10:00-16:30 GMT
University of Cambridge, Norwich Auditorium (Roger Needham building)
Organised by DRIFT and Research Software Engineering East of England (RSEEE), this Digital Research Infrastructure & Training Hackathon brings together researchers, developers, and facilitators to share skills, explore new ideas, and hack on projects that strengthen the adoption of digital research infrastructure.
Suggested hackathon topics are creating materials for demos and training on HPC, debugging issues with our mini HPC cluster, or helping develop Gutenberg, an interactive training platform developed by RSEs for delivering training in software engineering and research computing-related topics to researchers, students and other RSEs.
We are especially interested in creating materials for domains that aren’t already heavy HPC users, so if that’s you, please come along.
Autumn/Winter Season of Code for Thought
The new autumn/winter season of Code for Thought, the podcast for RSEs and researchers who code, has started in September. And so far we’ve heard from the Code Refinery, Open Source Software in nuclear fusion, how the Voyager probes (launched in 1977!) record sound in space (yes, really) and how Phil Reed from Uni Manchester is helping get people in research up to speed with their digital skills. And more. Why not give it a listen?
Knowledge Exchange Fellows, reviewers and placement proposals wanted
The Computational Abilities Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) project is excited to announce the opening of the first round of calls for applications for our flexible funds! Apply to become a Knowledge Exchange Fellow, obtain funding for a placement or a visit, or become a reviewer:
Society Updates
And finally, our regular reminder that we have a number of events, initiatives and resources that you might want to check out. These are linked below.
| Special Interest Groups | We have eight Special Interest Groups being run by our community members, and supported by the Society. Check out our SIGs page to get involved (or start your own!). |
| Events and Initiatives Fund | The Society has Events and Initiatives funding to provide support for events and initiatives which support our mission statement and charitable objectives. |
| Membership | Not yet a member? Why not join us today? We welcome anyone who supports our mission, whether or not they are employed as RSEs. |
| Jobs | A reminder that if you are looking for RSE-related jobs, you can join the #jobs channel on the RSE Slack workspace or visit our vacancies page. |
| Zenodo | We have a Community Zenodo Account for RSEs in the community to share publications about RSE. |
| Podcasts | Code for Thought is back and now in its ninth season, with episodes now in English, German and French. It is available on all major podcast directories, including YouTube. |
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And remember, if you have any news or announcements you would like us to include in the newsletter, please let us know using this form.
