RSE Stories

RSE Stories

By Vanessa SochatTechnology
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RSE Stories episodes

  • 300 Nodes in a Closet

    For this episode of RSE Stories we are joined by Fernanda Foertter, Director at Voltron Data and experienced HPC practitioner. You may know her on Twitter as @hpcprogrammer, or for her significant contributions at earlier roles at Nvidia or Oak Ridge National Lab, but have you heard her origin story, and how she got involved in this work? In this episode, we travel with Fernanda through her early work, discovering her love and saavy for computers, and following her interests. We talk about her journey through national labs, tech companies, and now at Voltron Data where her adventure continues.

    44 min
  • SC22 Mini-series: ECP Past Participants

    Last time in the SC22 Mini-series, we learned about the Early Career Program (ECP)

    from its chair, Marina Kraeva. Today we get a first-hand glimpse into what the program can
    offer its attendees as we talk to six previous ECP participants.

    Our six guests in this episode are Sameh Abdulah, Jean Luca Bez, Silvina Caino-Lores,

    Hang Liu, Valeria Barra, and Bashir Mohammed. In a mix of one-on-one and panel interviews,
    these past attendees tell us how ECP taught them valuable professional
    lessons from funding to time management to mentor-mentee relationship building,
    as well as created lasting connections and a sense of community with a network of both their peers and
    more senior scientists and researchers.

    All participants encourage any professionals in their early career to apply for

    the program this year, taking place in Dallas, TX, as part of Supercomputing 2022. To apply,
    visit the Early Career Program page.

    As a bonus, two of our interviewees also spoke to Marina Kraeva for an SC22 blog

    post! Check it out on the SC22 Blog Posts Page.

    48 min
  • Joys and Challenges with Big Research Data

    Ana Trisovic is a Research Associate at Harvard School of Public Health and a Sloan Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Effectively, she does data engineering for her research group and works on reproducible data and software dissemination. First, Ana speaks of her background, from her first job at Microsoft Development Center Serbia, to CERN, UChicago, and Harvard. She shares what inspired her to pursue projects relating to open-source software, open data, and open science. Her work focuses on big data workflows and research reproducibility, and she shares her experiences working with particle physics experimental data, geospatial and climate data, and sensitive medical data. As a member of Consortium of Scientific Software Registries and Repositories (SciCodes), she contributes to research data and software sharing and preservation efforts. Her study shows that research software and code scripts are frequently shared with data, and she is working on better supporting those in the Dataverse data repository. We discuss data engineering roles in the broader RSE scope and recognize them as undervalued yet critical for research groups working on secondary data analysis. Ana speaks of the joys and challenges of working with diverse datasets and the value of open-source software, reusable data workflows, and adequate documentation. She shares recommendations for publishing research data with software and emphasizes the role of data repositories. We end the conversion with community engagement topic ideas.

    35 min
  • SC22 Mini-series: Early Career Program

    Marina Kraeva is a Senior Research Computing Systems Analyst at Iowa State

    University and this year’s Early Career Program Subcommittee Chair. In this
    episode, Marina tells us about the history of the Early Career Program (ECP) at
    Supercomputing, the overarching goals of ECP, and what potential participants
    can expect to learn this year!

    She encourages all professionals in their early career to apply for the program

    this year, taking place in Dallas, TX, as part of Supercomputing 2022. To apply,
    go to the Early Career Program page
    and click “Application Details.”

    13 min
  • Statistical Engineering

    What is the line between a biostatistician and a data scientist? And how does the work or impact differ between

    academia and industry? Today on RSE Stories we talk to Daniel Sabanés Bové, a Senior Principal Data Scientist and Associate Director at Roche who graduated from the University of Zurich with a PhD in statistics. Not only does Daniel build tools, he has published a statistics book, leads a team, and can see his work trickling down to the production of medicine. So what does a bioengineer do at a company like Roche? He’s engineering
    tools for statisticians to do better work or gain insights, and often even open-sourcing them! And he loves his job.
    Are you interested in biostatistics or collaboration in this domain? Daniel would be a good person to reach out to, and this episode a good one to listen to!

    32 min
  • SC22 Mini-series: Inclusivity Committee

    Jay Lofstead is a member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories

    and this year’s Supercomputing 2022 (SC22) Inclusivity Committee Chair. In this
    episode, Jay tells us about his experiences volunteering with SC over the past
    few years, the history of the Inclusivity committee, and his plans for
    implementing change to make Supercomputing 2022 a truly accessible and
    inclusive environment for all participants!

    He also ends with a call to action. If you have feedback about your experiences

    at Supercomputing that could help Jay improve inclusivity, please email the
    committee at [email protected].

    19 min
  • The Really Cool Pen

    Megan Phinney is a recent graduate of Iowa State University, and will starting a full time position at Los Alamos National

    Lab after her graduation this month! In this episode, Megan tells us her story of stumbling on a national lab (hint, a funky pen is involved!)
    and her early experiences working as an intern at LANL, and how important a particular teacher was to her path. We discuss
    how research software engineering might relate to HPC, the student cluster competition at the Supercomputing (SC) conference,
    the importance of people, and projects Charliecloud and squashfs.

    By the way, Megan makes beautiful slides! We all should aspire for this level of funny and greatness :)

    22 min
  • The Master Connector

    For the most part when I’ve been introduced to DEI groups and initiatives, they mean well but I’m left feeling a bit lost.

    I either don’t fully understand what I can do, or I don’t think the initiative itself fully grasps the depth of the issue.
    My view on DEI, “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” changed when I watched a talk by Rowland Mosbergen, a strategic leader at
    the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia, and founder of Practical Diversity and Inclusion, a resource for improving Diversity and Inclusion for individuals and organizations to use. Rowland is one of those people
    that you talk to and you are given pause, because he’s given insights you’ve never thought about before. In this episode of RSE
    Stories, we talk to Rowland about his life experiences, and how important it is for all of us to advocate for others. We talk
    about challenges and strengths of the RSE community, interviewing, and how we collaborate across communities. This was
    one of my favorite conversations that I’ve had on the show, and I hope that you find it leaves as impression as well.

    44 min
  • The Podcast Experiment

    Peter is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of College London, a role he joined

    in late 2019 after a rich career in the private sector. In this 71st episode, Peter
    talks about his journey from Germany, to London, and what it’s been like to work in
    everything from medical imaging to working at Sony and reference manager Mendeley.
    How did he stumble on his first role as an RSE, and what did it push him to try?
    What kind of experiments is he running at his new podcast Code for Thought?
    Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

    A personal note from producer @vsoch, I am so grateful to have had Peter’s voice on the RSE Stories podcast for a year, and am cheering him on for his podcast experiment and fun adventures in his new RSE career! I mean what I said Peter, you are soft-spoken and kind and it was a pleasure to work with you.

    36 min
  • I'm invisible, but I can see the differences

    For our 70th episode we chat with Peter Vaillancourt, a Computational Scientist at the Cornell Center of Advanced Computing.

    Peter took a non-traditional path to his current role, starting in the Air Force and eventually studying math and physics, and eventually
    finding his love for programming. In this episode, Peter talks about his journey to understand himself, and some of the challenges that our community
    faces when dealing with diversity, trauma, and understanding one another. We talk about retention and opportunity, and
    the idea of micro-compassions - small acts of kindness that make our community a place that we want to be.
    Could we imagine a future where our community and larger tech is a safe place for all kinds of people? Could we see a future where it’s possible to get training in computational science
    without requiring a domain science? Listen to the episode to find out!

    35 min

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