#586 Online: US Research Software Engineer Association

Software has become a major driver for research and a plethora of libraries and packages have been developed enabling significant discoveries such as the gravitational waves from colliding black holes and the analyses of DNA from Next-Generation Sequencing technologies. While these discoveries are recognized world-wide for their importance, the required software or the people creating and maintaining the software to achieve them, rarely get the same recognition.

The mission of the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE) is to empower a diverse workforce of Research Software Engineers through advocacy, professional development, and collaboration. US-RSE aims at advancing the recognition of their crucial role in driving research discoveries to an established profession. US-RSE was founded in 2018 with about 20 members. Volunteer work has grown the number of members to over 2300. Like for many nonprofit organizations, most of the work is done by only a few volunteers though. While these individuals are very passionate about improving the RSE ecosystem, the challenge is to protect them from burning out without stopping their enthusiasm. The presenter will go into approaches to address this challenge that are suitable for volunteer organizations in general.