The Better Scientific Software Fellowship was well engaged at US-RSE'25!
The Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellowship community was again well represented at the US Research Software Engineer Association conference(US-RSE'25), taking place in October in beautiful and historic Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The conference was a great success, as highlighted by Elsa Gonsiorowski, Coordinator of the BSSw Fellowship Program, who showcased our 2025 BSSw Fellows and Honorable Mentions during the concluding plenary session. The BSSw community also had a successful poster session showcasing the fellowship and a well attended Birds-of-a-Feather session, where 15 past and current fellows and honorable mentions talked about their BSSw projects and experiences, and they interacted with potential future fellows and collaborators.
BSSw Fellows and Honorable Mentions from various cohorts enjoyed attending US-RSE'25.
The broad impact of the Better Scientific Software Fellowship program was evident throughout the US-RSE'25 program, with strong participation of the BSSw community. Former BSSw Fellows Nitin Sukhija (2022) and Damian Rouson (2020) were Guided Affinity Group leaders as a part of the Building Engagement program, run by Sustainable Horizons Institute, to help introduce students to conferences and interdisciplinary interactions. David Bunten (2024) led a well attended session on the Software Gardening Almanack, which he created as a part of his BSSw Fellowship and has continued to update and maintain, and Brigitta Sipőcz (2025 BSSw Fellow, 2023 BSSw Honorable Mention) showcased her current project with a session on producing and maintaining user-facing tutorials. Myra Cohen (2023) represented the BSSw Fellowship community well as the US-RSE’25 keynote speaker, where her talk “Building Confidence in What we Build: Correctness in Research Software in the Age of AI”一built with decades of experience, including her BSSw fellowship project (Improving the quality of scientific software through rigorous software testing)一will have a lasting impact on attendees.
The BSSw Fellowship community looks forward to continued engagement at the US-RSE’26 conference, to be held in the San Francisco Bay area, with Keith Beattie (2021 BSSw Honorable Mention) serving as a co-General Chair.
Further information
- Check out the US-RSE website: https://us-rse.org.
Author bio
Adam Lavely is the BSSw Fellowship Deputy Coordinator and a User Environment Architect at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
