Emerging Voices Plenary

Jack Atkinson

Research Software Engineer
Institute of Computing for Climate Science - University of Cambridge

2024-09-04

Touching Grass by Brian J Matis licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Everbody’s free (to wear sunscreen) (Luhrmann et al. 1997)

The research should come above us and them.
But requires a culture change from both sides.
We need to engage both academic AND RSE communities

Fortran-lang logo from SVG repo under MIT license

• Theory and C++ - Hated programming for years.
• 4th year - computer modelling thermodynamics thesis
  Fortran! Using computation.

Simulation from the NCAR CCSM Model by Gary Strand licensed under CC BY-NC
Institution logos from relevant bodies under fair use

• PhD and Postdocs numerically modelling geoscience
  Found my true love - using code to understand the planet.
• Working at BAS as a ‘careful coder’
  Became aware of SE ideas (but not RSE)
  Frustrated at applying them and a general lack of care - “BS=BR”!!
• Job opening at ICCS allowing me to combine climate modelling with software.

Better Software Better Research by the SSI licensed under CC BY-NC

Alex Szalay. See, e.g. VanderPlas (2014)

Photograph by Marion Weinzierl, used with permission.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807
This illustration is created by Scriberia with The Turing Way community, used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.
The Turing Way Community.

Philosophical Transactions Volume 1 by Henry Oldenburg licensed under CC BY

1. Musings with Julius Busecke, NYU
   
2. github.com/jatkinson1000/its-pikachu

RSE Unicorn by Cristin Merritt used with permission

Thanks

 Jack Atkinson

 jackatkinson.net

 jwa34[AT]cam.ac.uk

 jatkinson1000

 @jatkinson1000@fosstodon.org

A longer blog post/essay expanding on this talk will appear at jackatkinson.net/post

Thanks to the following for their support in my RSE journey:

Simon Clifford

Chris Edsall

Paul Richmond

Marion Weinzierl

Steven Carlysle-Davies

Kacper Kornet

Julius Busecke

Peter Kirsch

Sarah Glauert

Arjen Tamerus

Liam Pattinson

References

Luhrmann, Baz, Mary Schmich, Nigel Swanston, Cox Tim, Josh Abrhams, and Nellee Hooper. 1997. “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” EMI Capitol.

Simpson, Mike. 2023. “What Is a Research Software Engineer?” Medium. https://medium.com/newcastle-university-research-software-engineering/what-is-a-research-software-engineer-85cb384a520b.

VanderPlas, Jake. 2014. “Hacking Academia: Data Science and the University.” https://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2014/08/22/hacking-academia/.

Precursors

Slides and Materials

To access links or follow on your own device these slides can be found at:
jackatkinson.net/slides

Licensing

Except where otherwise noted, these presentation materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

Vectors and icons by SVG Repo under CC0(1.0) or FontAwesome under SIL OFL 1.1