From 23-28 June 2024, the Oxford Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship Programme ran a Research Software Engineering (RSE) Workshop, with Schmidt AI in Science Fellows from eight associated universities taking part: University of California San Diego, University of Chicago, Cornell University, Imperial College London, University of Michigan, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, The National University of Singapore, and University of Oxford.
In the lead up to the workshop, Fellows were taught RSE skills online, with the Oxford RSE team providing lectures and exercises on subjects including programming using Python, testing and continuous integration using GitHub, and reproducible computational research pipelines.
40 participants taking this training were invited to join a workshop in Oxford, in which the Fellows gained hands-on experience in creating software during a week-long hackathon. Fellows were invited to submit proposals for group software projects and were assigned team members to help them work on these during the week.
Participants enjoyed a variety of activities during the week, including a special Large Language Models workshop delivered by the University of Cambridge Accelerate Programme for Scientific Discovery Team, a dinner on the rooftop of St Hilda’s College, an open-air Shakespeare production, and a dinner at newly opened Reuben College.
Following the hackathon, groups will continue to receive support by members of the Oxford RSE team.
RSE training is an integral part of the Oxford Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship and is the first taught course on the programme. The Oxford Schmidt AI in Science Programme Director, Ben Lambert says:
Good research software engineering practices are essential to ensure that our Fellows’ work is reproducible, robust and usable by others. By providing research software engineering training to the worldwide Schmidt AI in Science Fellows, this will maximise their research impact.
The RSE workshop was well received by participants, with over 60% of participants giving the week a score of 10/10, with many fellows commenting “please do this again!”.
The workshop week was generously supported by Schmidt Sciences.
