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Template ID: ruminativemauve Size: 48x36 DRI-focussed training for research facilitators and teams (DRIFT) L Moran1, N Chue Hong1, J Cohen2, M Robinson3, W Filinger1, A Roubickova1, C Palansuriya1, E Zormpa2 1EPCC, University of Edinburgh, 2Imperial College London, 3University of Oxford This component of the DRIFT project aims to identify effective project management strategies for RSEs, develop a curriculum to teach these practices, and highlight factors contributing to successful and poor software development outcomes. The training curriculum is being designed through: ●Consultation with the RSE community. ●Reviewing existing open-source and proprietary training courses. ●Integrating best practices and learning resources developed within the RSE community into a cohesive, structured program. The training material focuses on equipping RSEs to: 1. Understand the unique challenges of research software projects. 2. Apply core project management principles in software development. 3. Implement Agile methods effectively. 4. Build and sustain high-performing research software teams. 5. Address common risks and quality issues in research software projects. A pilot training course is planned for early 2026. WP2 - Project management skills Get involved! HPC Survey We have started by compiling a list of all 141 universities that are part of Universities UK and collating publicly available information about their access to Tier 2 and Tier 3 HPC facilities, as well as the DRI support available. We then plan to reach out to those institutions without established access, to showcase the usefulness of such facilities. Building a mini HPC Cluster At the heart of this portable cluster are 36 Raspberry Pi 5 nodes. Of these, 32 act as compute nodes with the remaining 4 providing an interactive node for users to connect to, as well as a distributed storage system. The cluster has been designed to showcase features that can be found on a full-size rack-mounted computing cluster, including an enterprise network switch and power distribution unit, with all nodes/hardware mounted in a portable 19-inch rack case. An individual cluster compute node… Our rack-mount cluster case during the build… Research facilitation research Research facilitation is not a well understood profession, so in collaboration with WP1 we want to reach out to professionals already in these roles. We are planning to undertake qualitative research using semi-structured interviews - this work is currently still at the design phase. WP3 - Community Engagement Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) is now ubiquitous in research. It has revolutionised the way that we conduct research, pervading all aspects of the research lifecycle. DRIFT aims to address the lack of DRI training for research support roles, and to improve visibility of DRI outside of physical sciences and engineering. The project is split into four streams of work, each focusing on crucial elements of making the DRI landscape more accessible. Community is an important aspect to defining and supporting DRI and those who facilitate it. By engaging with existing communities to better understand their challenges and needs, DRIFT aims to expand and improve the DRI landscape in the UK. This includes creating resources for managing and co-ordinating both across and within interdisciplinary research teams, and exploring different management frameworks to guide effective practices. We are also investigating training needs of research facilitation and engagement professionals. In the scope of this project, we define digital research facilitation as any activity engaging the research community to enable, improve or extend the use of research tools and infrastructures. It is essential in ensuring DRI is visible, accessible and usable for the communities it serves, and yet it tends to be embedded into many roles, often without proper recognition or resources. We’ve created a survey to gain insight and feedback across all of these work packages. To help us, please provide your insights by filling it in by scanning the QR code below! Visit our website at : www.drtp-skills.ac.uk to learn more. z WP1 explores the scope and impact of research facilitation in the UK DRI ecosystem. Our understanding of the research facilitator role is still very limited, so we are keen to engage to better understand what this role should look like and what kind of support and resources would be most useful. As a community, what sort of resources should we create for each of the research facilitation categories? What should those look like? WP1 - Research facilitation Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Vestibulum congue Training creation and delivery including different formats, contexts and delivery modes. Community engagement including outreach, signposting and raising awareness, community building and community management for specific group of researchers On-demand interactions including helpdesks, consultations, support accessing and using DRI Technical facilitation addressing researchers’ needs around research software and services (e.g. documentation, design, requirements) Research Facilitation ●Open-source teaching platform developed through the UNIVERSE-HPC and DRIFT projects with support from Oxford RSE (OxRSE). ●Structured, pathway-based training environment with a visual interface for browsing and viewing materials. ●Course management tools allow trainers to build syllabi, track student progress, and access exercise/challenge results. ●Interactive features include comments to enable student–instructor and peer discussion. ●Training materials repository: UNIVERSE-HPC/course-material, written in markdown with metadata (dependencies, learning objectives, licensing) ●Deployment options: ○Instructions via GitHub repository; hosted version at train.rse.ox.ac.uk. WP4 - Gutenberg platform A snapshot of part of the Cloud Computing schema on Gutenberg. Introduction
