DRI Retreat 2025 Programme

Welcome to the 2025 DRI Retreat! Building on the success of the pilot program we ran in 2022, we are happy to be back in Manchester again. The original event was inspired by the “virtual residency” hosted by Oklahoma Supercomputing Centre (USA) that has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) since 2015 under the leadership of Henry Neeman. This event has been customized to meet the needs of the UK community, with contributions from RSE, RIE and RDMs. The funding has come from STFC, and the organization & vision has come from N8 CIR.

We are excited to have around 100 in-person attendees this year, and over 40 online in a fully hybrid event. You are all very welcome. We hope you will find this event different from anything else you have attended. The intention is not to have experts tell you what to do with lots of PowerPoint, but rather to have facilitated panels and open-to-the-floor discussions, where everyone can share their experiences and learn from each other. Hence, the focus is on research software engineers, infrastructure engineers, and data managers at any stage of their careers, especially those new to these fields. Whoever you are, and whatever your career stage, we hope you will find this retreat to be informative and useful, an opportunity to reflect on your skills and needs, and a chance to network with others in the community.

Have fun, and enjoy the retreat!

Matt Probert, Director of N8 CIR.

The programme is available to download below or click on the links to find out more. Links to YouTube recordings of the sessions will be found on these pages shortly.

Monday 13th January
Collaboration and communication
Building trust and effective communication between DRI professionals and researchers from different disciplines | Linking all DRI Roles, how do we ensure collaboration across the professions? | Provision of training materials and digital support networks for academics | Making connections as the ‘lone’ DRI professional in you workspace and hybrid working solutions

Tuesday 14th January
Finding answers to your questions
Data collection, sustainability and integrity | Building relationships with industrial partners | Barriers encountered accessing digital infrastructure | Strategy development, business cases and securing funding | The funding landscape and making connections to align with UKRI calls

Wednesday 15th January
Leadership and Career Development
The impact of AI and machine learning on DRI workflows | The environmental impacts of infrastructure | DRI beyond HPC and RSE | Security and compliance | Preparing for the next generation of research computing infrastructure

Thursday 16th January
Leadership and career development
Career progression pathways for DRI professionals | Accessible training and staying relevant in a rapidly changing environment | Recruitment and diversity. How should it change? | Developing leadership skills for DRI professionals | Mentorship in DRI

Friday 17th January
The way forward for DRI professionals
Stories from the trenches: the good, the bad and the ugly | Integrating learnings and networks developed during the retreat into your career
KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Supporting diverse people and roles in digital research: learnings from the social sciences

Panellist Biographies
Discover the background and experiences of our panellists from reading their biographies