The Research Software Engineer (RSE) movement started in the UK in 2012 with the Society of RSE. Their goal is to make known the work of Research Software Engineers in Universities and industry. In 2024 EPFL and ETHZ started an effort to organize the RSE community in Switzerland.

Scroll down for a definition of an RSE and how to participate.

Upcoming meetings

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What is an RSE?

Quoting UK-RSE:
Regardless of your formal job title, if you answer yes to many of the following questions, you are doing the work of a Research Software Engineer:
  • Are you employed to develop software for research?
  • Are you spending more time developing software than conducting research?
  • Are you employed as a postdoctoral researcher, even though you predominantly work on software development?
  • Are you the person who does computers in your research group?
  • Are you sometimes not named on research papers despite playing a fundamental part in developing the software used to create them?
  • Do you lack the metrics needed to progress your academic career, like papers and conference presentations, despite having made a significant contribution through software?

Participating

A team comprised of C4DT, ENAC-IT4R, and SCITAS is collaborating to have regular meet-ups, common lunches, and create working groups.

We are part of an RSE4ORD grant, where we collaborate with other RSEs from the ETH domain to create a Swiss-wide RSE community. See RSEs at ETHZ for more information.

To participate, you can:

Looking forward to seeing you!

Recent Posts

RSEs as active contributors to build scientific communities around ORD

We’re excited to invite you for the upcoming discussion on how RSEs can participate in the community around Research Data Planification, DataManagement Plans and FAIR principles. Date: Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 Room: BC010 Signup: Cryptpad Form Agenda: 11:00 - Intro Gilles 11:15 - Presentation of discussion points 11:25 - Split up in groups 11:45 - Report from groups 12:00 - Pizza and discussions Gilles Dubochet from EPFL’s Open Science Unit will set the theme by laying out how Open Research Data (ORD) Data Management Plans (DMP) and Research Software Engineers (RSE) fit together.
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Open Source Software Services meet-up

The Center for Digital Trust (C4DT) welcomed participants from all over EPFL to the Spring edition of our Open Source Services meet-up on March 25th. As usual, the meet-up is an opportunity for EPFL’s open source community to gather and exchange ideas and experiences. The first part of the meet-up was a round of lightning talks followed by break-out discussion groups to allow participants to dive deeper into the topics. The meet-up was wrapped up by an open-ended pizza lunch where participants could continue to chat about their experiences running and using OSS services at EPFL.
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March 2025 RSE lunch

Hungry to meet other RSEs? Then come and have lunch with us on Thursday, the 20th of March, at 11:45am in Foodlab. There is also non-vegan food, because it’s Thursday :) Meeting in the entrance of native.
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More

Code publishing good practices guidelines

January 2025 RSE lunch

December Lightning Talks

October Lightning Talks

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