Abstract: Over the past decade, academia and national labs have increasingly recognized the crucial role of hidden contributors contributing to accelerating science. The acknowledgement is evident in quite some projects. From the founding of 8 Research Software Engineer Associations worldwide to the dedicated efforts of the NSF Center of Excellence for Science Gateways. While it is encouraging that the importance of research software and the people being in this line of work receive more attention, we still have a long road in front of us for well-defined career paths and incentives. A multi-facet approach is needed to meet researchers and educators as well as the hidden contributors where they are. This talk will delve into the crucial role of research software engineers in advancing research and computational activities. Furthermore, It will highlight the importance of fostering a community that encompasses all stakeholders in academia and national labs, advocating for a cultural change and actionable measures on how everyone can contribute to make it happen.

Bio: Sandra Gesing is the inaugural Executive Director of the US Research Software Engineer Association and a Senior Researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Her research focuses on science gateways, computational workflows as well as distributed and parallel computing. She is especially interested in sustainability of research software, usability of computational methods and reproducibility of research results. Sustainability of research software has many facets and she advocates for improving career paths for research software engineers and facilitators and for incentivizing their work via means beyond the traditional academic rewarding system. Before her positions at US-RSE and SDSC, she was a senior research scientist at the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), University of Illinois System, Chicago and she was an associate research professor at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. Before she moved to the US, she was a research associate at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Additionally, she has perennial experience as a project manager and system developer in industry in the US and Germany. As head of a system programmer group, she has long-term software projects. She received her Master’s degree in computer science from extramural studies at the FernUniversität Hagen and her PhD in computer science from the University of Tübingen, Germany.