History
RSE-NI was created in 2021, following the award of two five-year EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowships, worth £1.1m, to Andrew and Domhnall from Queen’s University Belfast. A key aim of these Fellowships is to establish a research software engineering (RSE) presence within Queen’s and NI, promoting RSE as a career pathway to attract and retain high level engineers within academic research. Professor Austen Rainer had mentored both Domhnall and Andrew through their Fellowship applications and continued working with both on RSE-related projects. It soon became apparent that other people were doing the work of an RSE, while under different job titles. Dave Young, who was awarded an SSI Fellowship in 2023, and Ken Smith, both software developers within QUB’s School of Maths and Physics, joined to help the fledgling group gather some momentum.
People
Andrew Brown
Dr Andrew Brown is an EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellow and Reader in theoretical physics at QUB. His physics research has focused mainly on the management and development of software to support state-of-the-art experimental research in atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics. He was awarded a 5-year £670k EPSRC RSE fellowship in 2020 to support his passion for developing research software infrastructure for computational AMO physics that has benefitted researchers from across the UK. In total, he has secured over £2.7M in EPSRC funding, including £1.5M as PI.
Domhnall Carlin
Dr Domhnall Carlin is an EPSRC RSE Fellow within QUB’s School of EEECS, having been awarded a 5-year £480k fellowship by EPSRC in 2021. Based at the Centre for Secure Information Technologies, the key aim of DC’s Fellowship is to establish an RSE career pathway to attract and retain high level engineers within academic research. The Fellowship supports research to develop and test software-based security threat mitigations for IoT devices, using AI at the processor level, which will provide future-ready protections against cyberattacks. It will also involve a multi-disciplinary collaboration with University College London into IoT-based tech-abuse for vulnerable sectors of society.
Dave Young
As a Research Software Engineer with a PhD in Astrophysics, Dr Dave Young works with multiple Astronomy based projects, all named with convoluted acronyms, helping them to build the sustainable software infrastructures needed to process and visualise the huge amounts of data they generate.
Ken Smith
Dr Kenneth Smith is a Software Developer in QUB’s School of Mathematics and Physics Astrophysics Research Centre (ARC)
Austen Rainer
Prof. Austen Rainer is Professor in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EEECS) at QUB and Theme Lead for the School’s Software Engineering strategic research theme, which he established in 2020. He already leads a multidisciplinary cross-faculty initiative to bring together RSEs, academics, software engineering students and external clients to develop high-quality software that positively impacts society, the environment, and the economy. He successfully advocated for, and lead, the installation of a bespoke 90-seat Software Studio, sponsored by Allstate.