Posted by r.ainsworth on 5 December 2022 - 2:00pm 

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona

Welcome to this month's SSI Fellows Newsletter which shares activities and opportunities taking place within the SSI Fellows' community. Read on for:

• Fellows' Spotlights: Leontien Talboom and Sophia Batchelor
• November 2022 Community Call recap
• Fellows' and related activities
• Upcoming events and calls

Fellows’ Spotlight

Leontien Talboom, Technical Analyst & Web Archivist at Cambridge University Libraries

• Updates from call - Updates from call - This year I have been working with the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), and specifically Jen Mitcham, on a guide to help digital preservation practitioners make the first steps in providing computational access to their material. This guide can now be found on the DPC website. We also had the opportunity to organise a panel session during iPres on the same topic, where we invited James Baker and Sonia Ranade to join the session. During the panel we were able to discuss a number of topics that were only touched upon within the guide, such as ethics, resources and skill levels. A summary of this panel session can be found in the iPres proceedings on Page 418.
• My non-work highlight - I really got back into knitting this year, it’s a lovely meditative thing to do and keeps my hands busy during meetings or online conferences (I have a tendency to fiddle with things and get easily distracted). I have even tried my hand at creating knitting charts for jumpers and created a digital preservation jumper with floppy disks on it which I am incredibly proud of. Knitting charts and pictures of the jumper can be found on my Twitter.
• My recommendations - Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. This year has been hectic, but this book has been such a lovely distraction. It portrays a society after a complete social collapse, but instead of a negative or dystopian perspective, it provides a positive and uplifting view of the future. Highly recommend if you, just like me and many others, get nervous from reading the news.

Sophia Batchelor, Community Manager, The Alan Turing Institute

• Updates from call - The AIM Research Support Facility (RSF) is a partnership hosted by The Alan Turing Institute, University of Edinburgh, and Swansea University that acts as a hub for the NIHR's Artificial Intelligence for Multiple Long-Term Conditions (AIM) programme. The RSF’s ambition is to facilitate deep collaboration across academic researchers and members of the public in projects that use AI to identify new clusters of disease and to understand how multiple long-term conditions develop. With the AIM research projects spanning the UK, we have focused on foundational community building through championing open and collaborative research practices starting with targeted trainings on GitHub, Public Involvement, R, and Trusted Research Environments (TREs) to bring researchers of different backgrounds into a shared understanding. Since June, we have run 24 workshop sessions, launched a resource hub and community led Glossary of Terms, and continue to bring the research community together in monthly Collaboration Cafes.
• My non-work highlight - I was able to visit Mexico for a friend’s wedding and had the beautiful opportunity to swim in some of the local Cenotes that connected to the sea. Growing up in New Zealand the ocean was always on our doorstep and we are taught as children that water is the source of all that is life, both biologically and spiritually. Being able to experience the water network that provides the same life to another culture was incredibly special.
• My recommendations - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Wonderfully written book that I found so hard to put down. It was a really lovely exploration into the purpose of video games, and what it means to be creative. I really enjoyed every moment of reading and it's squarely in the "warm hug" genre (alongside Becky Chambers) so I highly recommend.

Community Call Recap 

During the November 2022 SSI Fellows Community Call, we heard Fellows’ updates from Leontien Talboom and Sophia Batchelor. In a discussion group, we compiled the SSI Fellows’ feelgood favourites for a blog post on the SSI website - subscribe to the weekly newsletter to be notified when it is published!

Fellows’ and related activities

• Isla Myers-Smith wins a 2022 Philip Leverhulme Prize! - The Leverhulme Trust awards prizes to recognise and celebrate the achievements of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future careers are exceptionally promising. Each prize is worth £100,000 and may be used for any purpose that advances the prize winner’s research.
   
• Code for Thought - Code for Thought is a podcast on software, engineering, research and anything in between launched by Peter Schmidt. Recent episodes include conversations with SSI Fellows Colin Sauze, Bastian Greshake-Tzovaras and Thibault Lestang, and with SSI Staff on topics such as event organisation and supporting mental health.

Upcoming events and calls

• Volunteer to be a Reviewer for NASA grants - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are seeking subject matter experts to engage in discussions at a virtual panel meeting or provide external reviews to increase the pool of un-conflicted reviewers. In particular, SSI Fellow Yo Yehudi is seeking reviewers for Transform to Open Science Training proposals. You can read more about the role here and view the application form to review here.
   
• Call for the NERC Future Leaders Council - The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is the UK’s leading public funder of environmental science and is now seeking to recruit eight diverse Members, including a Chair, to join the new Future Leaders Council. Candidates are sought from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, whether that is from an early career researcher perspective, from business including small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), from groups representing wider society or from other disciplines with a cross over to environmental science.
  • Closing Date: 23:55 UTC on Friday, 16 December 2022
     
• Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting 2023 (FOSDEM’23) - Developers and users of open tools and technologies used in a research and investigation context are invited to contribute to the 2023 edition of FOSDEM, the largest open-source conference in Europe. SSI Fellow Yo Yehudi is one of the chairs for the Open Research Tools & Technologies devroom, and is seeking talks about new releases of open source software, open technology stacks, tool design and implementation, bridging tech culture with research and investigative environments, and experiences building open source devices or communities across a variety of research and investigative contexts. See the call for participation for more information.
  • Date: 4 to 5 February 2023
  • Location: Brussels, Belgium and online
  • Link: https://fosdem.org/2023/ 
     
• Collaborations Workshop 2023 (CW23) - Save the date! The Software Sustainability Institute’s Collaborations Workshop series brings together researchers, developers, innovators, managers, funders, publishers, policy makers, leaders and educators to explore best practices and the future of research software. The theme of CW23 is Sustainable Career Development for those in the research software community: looking after your software, your career, and yourself. 
  • Date: 2 to 4 May 2023
  • Link: https://www.software.ac.uk/cw23 

The monthly SSI Fellows Newsletter aims to share activities and opportunities taking place within the SSI Fellows' community. The newsletter will share a summary of the latest community call, as well as contributions and calls for collaboration from the SSI Fellows. We are looking for newsletter items related to events, webinars, workshops, resources, job and funding opportunities that SSI Fellows are involved in or looking for support with (submit via this Google Form). If you have any questions, please contact Community Manager Rachael Ainsworth at r.ainsworth@software.ac.uk.