Episode 3: Opening Up Research Code


12 December 2024 @ 8:30 - 10:00 am UTC (your local time)


Join RSSE Africa and the RSE Asia Association as we showcase the work of researchers who code, learn about good practices for writing research code, and connect with the global research software community!

In the third meetup of the series on “Enabling Open Science through Research Code”, we will meet several researchers from Africa and Asia who spend a significant part of their day programming. In this session, we will discuss ways to make your research code more open and usable to your future self and others. The tips and tricks our speakers will share could also help get recognition for the code you develop through traditional mechanisms such as publications.

Some topics that will be covered include:

An overview of motivations, benefits, and risks of sharing and reusing code

Identify whether you can use other people’s software

What contributes to the reusability of code

Open source licencing - when, how, what

GitHub and more

Making software citable including publishing papers on software.

A useful open educational resource related to these topics are available from CodeRefinery.

Follow the CodeRefinery lesson on Social Coding and Open Software

Our Speakers

Adeyinka Oresanya

Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software (CHAOSS)


Software Developer


Adeyinka Oresanya is a multidisciplinary software developer and open-source maintainer with a strong foundation in research. She holds a PhD in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, combining a unique blend of academic rigour and practical software engineering skills to lead impactful projects. As the Badging Lead for the DEI Event Badging Program at CHAOSS, she plays a key role in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion within open-source communities and events. Adeyinka also leads the CHAOSS Africa Developers’ Focus Group, where she drives initiatives aimed at fostering the growth of open-source developer communities across Africa.

Chioma Onyido

Bioconductor & Covenant University

Bioinformatics Engineer


Chioma is a seasoned biocurator and bioinformatician with a background in biochemistry, who transitioned into Bioinformatics to explore how computational tools and data science can solve real-world health challenges. Her work spans using Bioconductor and open-source tools to analyze complex biological datasets and develop predictive models, aiming to improve disease risk prediction for underrepresented populations. She enjoys making research more accessible by creating well-documented, reproducible code and sharing bioinformatics resources with the community.

Dr Kate Huddlestone

Department of General Linguistics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Senior Lecturer


I am a senior lecturer in the Department of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University, the managing editor for Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus (SPiL Plus) and deputy chairperson for the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (SALALS). My research focuses primarily on South African Sign Language (SASL) but I also work on aspects of the syntax and pragmatics of Afrikaans and South African English. I use ELAN to annotate SASL data collected from deaf signers. I use R to analyse the effect of linguistic and sociolinguistic variables on lexical variation, language structure and language use.

Juan Pablo Flores

GitHub


Senior Program Manager


Juan Pablo Flores is a Program Manager at GitHub, where he supports the creation of opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds to learn programming and fosters connections among different technical communities. He has worked on research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on how individuals collaborate on online platforms, and has explored the social dynamics of live streaming. His recent work includes advancing Open Science initiatives and measuring the impact of artificial intelligence in education, with the goal of leveraging technology for more inclusive and effective learning environments.

Mars Lee

NumPy & Open Source Design


Technical Illustrator


Mars Lee is a Technical Illustrator that makes byte-sized comics that explain technical topics! She uses art, an under-represented skillset in open source, to get scientists contributing. From contributing back to libraries they use, she hopes scientists share their own research code and software. She is active in the Scientific Python space, with contributions to NumPy, JupyterLab, scikit-learn and more. Her most recent works are the ‘How to Contribute to NumPy’ comics - https://heyzine.com/flip-book/3e66a13901.html