Mrs Nooriyah Lohani1, Dr Paula Martinez2
1New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, Auckland, New Zealand, 2Australian research data commons, Brisbane, Australia
The Research and Academic sector globally has seen a growth in the number of people who combine expertise in programming with an intricate understanding of research. Although this combination of skills is extremely valuable, research software engineers (RSEs), lack a formal place in the academic system. This means there is no easy way to recognise their contribution, to reward them, or to represent their views. Australia and New Zealand have come together to cater to the RSE communities in our region and established a regional chapter called RSE-AUNZ.
Since its inception in 2016, the international RSE survey has been led by the Software sustainability institute UK and run 3 times (2016, 2018, 2021). RSE-AUNZ joined the efforts to run the survey to understand the changing landscape of the community and its members. The survey results in 2018 gave us a great snapshot of who our communities in Australia and New Zealand are in terms of demographics and qualifications, as well as what they do in their roles, what motivates them and what they would like to do more of as part of their roles. Over time many more international partners have come together to help draft and disseminate the survey in their respective countries. The latest survey was last held in 2021 in which New Zealand and Australia participated. In this presentation we would like to present the findings of this survey and an interpretation of what the data tells us about the communities in each country.
Biography:
Nooriyah Lohani is a research communities advisor at the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, a national HPC provider in New Zealand. Nooriyah has a background in Genetics and computer science. Nooriyah co-chairs the steering committee of Research Software Engineers RSE-AUNZ association.
Paula Andrea Martinez is the Software Project Coordinator of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and Research Software Alliance (ReSA) Community Manager. She is leading projects of the Software Program to See, Shape and Sustain research software. She is a co-chair of the international FAIR4RS working group, co-host of the Visible Research Software interest group, and Steering Committee member of the Research Software Engineers RSE-AUNZ association. She has developed strategic planning and work packages to lead change in the recognition of research software as a first-class scholarly output of research.