Providing Software Support to Enable Research: From Feral Parakeets to the Times Digital Archive

Lightning Talk to be presented at the IDCC20 conference on February 18th 2020.

With the increasing interest in Data Science and demand from researchers for research software support, the University of Birmingham has recently established a Research Software Group (RSG) as part of Advanced Research Computing (ARC). Whilst the Research Engagement Group provide advice on storage and research data management, the RSG provides more advanced help similar to that provided by Data Stewards in Dutch research institutes, to build project-specific databases and design data workflows. Some of the Research Software Engineers (RSEs) are funded by individual schools or Colleges, which allows them to specialise in that research area and provide dedicated support.

Here we focus on three case studies which show the range of disciplines that require research software support and how this is enabling researchers to perform their research faster and better as well as allowing members of the public to both take part in research and access it more easily.