Meeting report — University of Bath 31st July 2026

This report was authored by Stephen Cook.

The fourth RSE South West regional group meeting took place on 31st July 2026. A total of 54 RSEs and people with related job-roles attended the in-person event at the University of Bath, hosted and organised by its RSE Facility. The event was funded by the Society of Research Software Engineering Events and Initiatives Grant.

Attendees of the fourth RSE South West regional meeting pose on a staircase in the 10W building in the University of Bath.

Participants at the RSE South West meeting at the University of Bath

The day involved one keynote talk, 16 talks and one discussion session. Attendees came from Universities (Bath, Bristol, Exeter, UWE and Swansea) as well as industry including the Met Office, Plymouth Marine Laboratory and DAFNI.

Talks

Following introductions from Stephen Cook representing the University of Bath and James Thomas representing RSE South West, Ed Bennett of Swansea University gave the keynote talk on the SHAREing network. Swansea had not previously been represented in the regional group meetings, and his engaging talk was well received and followed by questions from the room.

The other morning talks mostly had a “group introduction” theme, with presentations from Bath’s Institute for Mathematical Innovation, Bristol’s upcoming Mathematics Innovation Initiative, a space weather group at the Met Office, then ending with two talks from DAFNI. The two mathematical innovation groups represent teams with different concerns to those of RSEs, but similar models.

The afternoon was split into two presentation sessions broadly themed around projects and HPC. We heard from an SSI fellow from Cardiff University, four talks from University of Bristol, three from University of Bath, two from the Met Office and one from Red Oak Consulting. We closed out the day with a Padlet discussion session on use of GenAI for coding.

All abstracts and slides from the day, along with recordings from previous events, can be found on the meetings page for the regional group.

Breaks and Social

Between sessions, attendees networked over hot drinks. Lunch was provided as a choose-your-own packed lunch which was taken outside to enjoy the weather.

Following the event discussions continued over drinks and pizza at The Bell Inn in Bath.

Feedback

Early feedback is generally positive and suggests a desire for more emphasis on networking and discussion time at future events. There are already discussions as to a venue for the next event, so watch this space!

Acknowledgement

Thanks to the presenters for the great variety and quality of talks.

We’re grateful to the Society of Research Software Engineering for providing financial support for this meeting.

The Society for Research Software Engineering logo in colour.

Society of RSE logo (resized), used with permission. See https://society-rse.org/trademark-and-logo-policy/ for terms of use.