Research Software Conversation Series

Tools and techniques for modern research in different domains

The Imperial College London Research Software Engineering community will be hosting and organising the “Research Software Conversation Series: Tools and techniques for modern research in different domains” from May to July 2025. This monthly series will run in hybrid mode, is free, and is open to anyone interested in research and research software.  

The sessions will be informal and conversational in the form of a roundtable discussion with domain and software experts. They are intended to highlight the challenges and experiences at the intersection of research and the software created during research.

These sessions are likely to be of interest, but not limited to the following groups  

• Those that develop software for research 
• Masters/doctoral/postdoctoral researcher working predominantly on software development 
• PI/Manager of a group that mostly develops research software 
• PI/Manager looking for incorporating good research software engineering practices in your group 
• Those curious about research software engineering practices 

Session 1: Keeping track: version control for reproducible research 

The first session of the Research Software Conversation Series: Tools and techniques for modern research in different domains organised by the Imperial College London Research Software Engineering community, will explore how version control helps to make research more reproducible.  

Date: 22 May 2025

Time: 12.30 - 14.00 (BST)

Location: Online and Skempton Building 164

Speakers:

• Hui Ling Wong, Research Postgraduate, Department of Aeronautics 
• Dr Rafael Palacios, Professor in Computational Aeroelasticity 
• Dr Chris Cantwell, Reader in Computational Engineering 
• Dr Sylvain Laizet, Professor in Computational Fluid Mechanics 
• Dr Alvaro Cea, Research Associate 

Facilitator: Dr Irufan Ahmed, Senior Research Software Engineer , Department of Aeronautics

What to expect:

Have you ever felt lost in _final_v2_final versions of your code or analysis scripts? Effective version control is essential for robust, reproducible research, but how does it work in practice? We will be discussing these practical challenges during this session. 

Hui Ling Wong will provide a concise introduction to the fundamentals of version control and help understand the core concepts and benefits for individual researchers and teams. 

This will be followed by a candid panel discussion with researchers and academics from the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London. We will hear about how they leverage version control tools (like Git) in their research groups, the hurdles they've encountered, and any tips they have for getting started or improving existing workflows. 

Session 2: Research software for hardware control and automation 

The second session of the Research Software Conversation series: Tools and Techniques for Modern Research in different domains organised by the Imperial College London Research Software Engineering community, will explore how research software is used for hardware control and automation. 

Date: 17 June 2025

Time: 13.00 - 14.30 (BST)

Location: Online and Blackett LT2

Dr Matthew Ward will give a presentation: Building a Solution Processing Robot: How Hard Can it Be?

Abstract:
In this talk, I’ll share my experience of developing an automated solution-processing robot to streamline materials fabrication in an academic lab. Like many researchers, I started with little more than some basic automation experience, a few robotic components, and the vague hope that 1 year would be enough time to get things up and running (it wasn’t!).

This journey highlights the messy middle ground between scientific research and engineering — from selecting cost-effective robot arms and writing control software, to debugging in hexadecimal, and working around infrastructure never designed for automation. I’ll reflect on the challenges of building reliable, extensible hardware control systems with limited time and resources, and the trade-offs between hacked-together scripts and maintainable code.

Whether you're a PI looking to move in this direction, a PhD student wrestling with motor drivers, or a software engineer trying to make sense of it all, this talk offers both cautionary tales and practical insights into making lab automation actually work — without letting the robot arms punch new holes in the lab!

Followed by a roundtable discussion with the following speakers:

• Prof. Jenny Nelson, Professor of Physics 
• Dr Jon Murray, Research Fellow 
• Dr Alex Dewar, Senior Research Software Engineer 
• Dr Matthew Ward, Research Associate 

Facilitator: Dr Diego Alonso Álvarez, Head of Research Software Engineering 

Session 3: Research software documentation 

The third session of the Research Software Conversation series: Tools and Techniques for Modern Research in different domains organised by the Imperial College London Research Software Engineering community, will explore the benefits of documenting research software.

Date: 14 August 2025

Time: 13.00 - 14.30 (BST)

Location: Online and Sir Michael Uren Building, 1204

Our speakers:

• Emma Russell, Senior Web Application Developer, School of Public Health
• Dr Giovanni Charles, Senior Research Software Engineer, School of Public Health
• Dr Richard Fitzjohn, Principal Architect, Research Software Engineering Group, School of Public Health
• Dr Katy Gaythorpe, Assistant Professor in Epidemiology of VPD

Facilitator: Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, Research Software Engineer, Research Computing Services