“I love podcasts! They can be a great medium to learn about new ideas, get entertained and listen to great stories. And since the work of research software engineers takes us to so many different areas of exiting research I thought it might be a good idea to have a podcast for and from us. All the more as the role of RSE appears to be relatively recent. Indeed, we still find some people inside research and academia – and certainly outside it – that are unaware of who we are and what we do.

Luckily, Vanessa Sochat from Stanford created a podcast for RSEs. Since 2019 she has brought us the ‘RSE Stories’ podcast (https://us-rse.org/rse-stories/ ) with new stories published every 2 weeks.

Therefore, I am terribly excited to team up with Vanessa and give you even more stories from research software engineers across continents.

Vanessa and I decided to publish new episodes every 2 weeks, so that you get a new RSE story every week.

Our first episode ever from the UK/EU just went live today, Thursday 11 June 2020 (https://us-rse.org/rse-stories/2020/richard-fitzjohn/ ):
In this episode I interview Richard Fitzjohn from Imperial College London. Richard leads a team of research software engineers (RSE) at the MRC (Medical Research Council) Centre for Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. He and his team help epidemiologists develop models for infectious diseases. Lately, this has meant developing models for the coronavirus outbreak. In this episode we discuss: What does his work entail? And with some models being made public, how can research software engineers ensure that best development practices and standards are being followed and maintained?

The RSE Stories podcast is about YOU. Therefore, if you have an idea for an episode or would like to be on the podcast yourself, drop me an email:
[email protected]

A bit about me: I joined UCL as a senior RSE in Dec 2019 after having worked in the private sector for nearly 20 years. My career, however, started in research. First in particle physics at the University of Hamburg in Germany, then a research fellowship for a medical physics project at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. So, I am very happy to be back in research.”