The US-RSE is a community-driven effort focused on the increasingly important role of research software engineers – people who create, maintain and contribute to the growing research software ecosystem.

Gupta has worked as a research software engineer at Argonne for the past two decades and is an ardent advocate of the importance of the RSE in the national laboratories. For example, she spearheaded the creation of the US-RSE Working Group on RSE empowerment in national labs. She presented a white paper, titled ​“Understanding the Manifold Gap for RSE Recognition in National Laboratories,” at the RSE-HPC-2020 workshop at SC’20; the paper is being used to push forward lab discussions about the importance of fully supporting the careers of RSEs in Department of Energy labs. Moreover, in early 2021, Gupta started a grass-roots movement for empowerment of RSEs at Argonne, with emphasis on promoting interactions among RSEs across various divisions and disseminating information about the RSE movement.

“RSEs form the backbone of the scientific community,” Gupta said. ​“Being a part of the US-RSE steering committee will help me bring RSEs at national labs and their issues to the forefront and work toward increasing their sense of belonging in the scientific software community.”

For further information about the US-RSE association, click here. For the steering committee candidates’ statements, see https://​us​-rse​.org/​2​0​2​2​-​1​1​-​1​8​-​s​c​-​c​a​n​d​i​d​a​t​e​s​/​#​r​i​n​k​u​-​gupta.