Parallel sessions by theme

Synthetic data helps researchers work with sensitive data that can't be shared publicly, but most tools lack privacy guarantees. This session introduces metasyn, a transparent and privacy-friendly tool, and invites participants to explore safe synthetic data practices and discuss limitations.

Generative AI has revolutionized the field of natural language processing and greatly simplified the processing of unstructured text data. This presentation gives a demonstration of prompt engineering for research data processing on a use case, sharing principles for improving the accuracy and consistency of AI-generated outputs , so that generative AI can be used as a reliable research tool.

Following best practices in research software development is essential for creating sustainable and FAIR software, but keeping up with evolving standards can be challenging. This hands-on session introduces Code Auditor, an open-source tool that helps assess research software projects against community best practices and provides actionable recommendations for improvement. Participants will learn how to use Code Auditor to analyze codebases or GitHub repositories and generate detailed reports covering key areas such as documentation, licensing, citation, packaging, and publishing readiness.

Make your software harder, better, faster, stronger—by employing the right software best practices. Writing a Software Management Plan (SMP) helps you figure out which practices matter most for long-term sustainability, but existing templates often lack context. The open-source, web-based SMP Tool, developed by the TDCC-NES project, guides you through creating a tailored plan and recommends best practices, resources, and examples—whether you're working on a small script or a large framework.

This presentation illustrates how PartitionedArrays.jl, a small Julia-based library for distributed sparse linear algebra, can compete with large HPC libraries like PETSc. By using a modern language and a novel parallel programming model, it enables parallel code that is easier to write, read, and maintain, while matching or exceeding PETSc’s performance.

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is Europe’s flagship initiative to accelerate open science by enabling seamless access to research data, software, and services across disciplines and borders. This session places EOSC in context — why it matters now, and how it strengthens the European research ecosystem. It highlights the EOSC EU Node as a first step in federating services and resources, with practical guidance on accessing services, contributing ideas, and engaging with the SURF EOSC Pilot Node.

This presentation shares the experiences of research software developers working on the NWO-VIDI project Lettercraft and Epistolary Performance in early Medieval Europe. It explores challenges in designing a database for qualitative research, the collaborative development of a data model, and technical decisions made to ensure a flexible and maintainable codebase. The team highlights the value of early prototyping and agile development to enable fast feedback and close collaboration with researchers.

Julia is getting increasingly more popular as a language for data analysis and modelling, promising the ease of Python or R with a run-time efficiency closer to C or Fortran. This talk presents new training material targeted towards researchers, developers and research software engineers, covering Julia basics, package development, performance tuning, and type stability using engaging examples.

As part of a project initiated at the NES-Col Lab retreat 2025, a roadmap for FAIR software skills is being developt, designed to guide researchers through what skills they need to develop based on their current knowledge and needs. The roadmap breaks down FAIR software practices into individual skills, each linked to high-quality learning resources. This session presents the initial roadmap, designed for a PhD student with basic programming experience, and the methodology behind it.

With the recent hype surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs), it might seem like traditional Natural Language Processing (NLP) lesson materials are obsolete. This presentation shares experiences from developing new lesson material that show the strong connection between NLP fundamentals and LLMs, and the importance of understanding the nuances in liguistic data. The training material is mainly aimed at graduate students with basic technical knowledge and promotes efficent and safe NLP practices.

The Programming CAFE initiative supports researchers and research supporters in building sustainable, welcoming spaces where coding skills can be learned, practiced, and shared. This presentation showcases the launch of an inaugural Programming CAFÉ and tools (reusable website template, session material framework, and promotional assets) to help institutions in starting their own CAFE. It’s also a call to action: start a local CAFE, join the network, or contribute materials.

This session presents materials for a workshop that teaches researchers the skills to make code reusable by others and shares teaching experiences. The material (available under a CC-BY license) guides participants to share their coding project on GitHub and work on the minimal requirements needed for others to run their code, ending with a short reusability check of each other's repository.

Landelijke Docs is an informal initiative driven by the shared interest of support professionals developing training and policy for research software. By connecting efforts and integrating with existing platforms and directories, they help ensure valuable local work becomes more discoverable, impactful, and sustainable nationally. They will develop a new section for RST-NL: a webbook outlining good practices and resources for open research software, and use another platform as a repository of openly licensed training materials developed by Dutch universities.

Research software is essential to modern science, yet the people behind it—Research Software Engineers (RSEs)—often lack recognition and face job insecurity. This session explores what RSEs need to succeed: well-defined career paths, supported by sustainable funding structures. Drawing on insights from a recent LCRDM report, two working groups are pushing for change: one focused on developing career frameworks, the other on addressing the funding and policy barriers necessary to support them. Join us to discuss progress and help shape the future of research software expertise in Dutch academia.

The Research Software Directory (RSD, https://research-software-directory.org) is an open-source platform designed to showcase the impact of research software using a broad range of qualitative indicators. The demo session will give a guided tour of the RSD and show how it can be used to most effectively showcase impact of research software.

The lack of standardised guidelines and best practices for software development and curation has resulted in challenges in finding, reusing, and reproducing research results. This session presents two pathways to enhance the FAIRness and impact of research software: assessing existing software using a new F-UJI tool extension, and applying metadata guidelines developed in the FAIR-IMPACT project. It includes experiences from 10 adopters across Europe and aims to raise awareness of these valuable outputs.

Research software is essential for sustainable, FAIR, and high-quality research, yet its development and maintenance are often invisible in institutional funding and recognition structures. This session presents findings from the TDCC-NES study “Financing Sustainable Research Software” and showcases TDCC-funded projects with strong software components, including how RSEs can get involved. Together, we’ll reflect on strategies to convey the value of research software and explore effective funding models.

The Netherlands eScience Center is the national center of expertise on research software with the mission to empower researchers across all disciplines through innovative research software. With the end of the 2020-2025 strategy period and a reorganization in 2025, the new strategy is crucial for the institute's future direction an role. In this session, we will share our strategy and invite input from the research software community.

Sustained investment in research software requires moving beyond downloads/citations to demonstrate  impact. Using the WeNMR platform—a VRE for structural biology with over 68,000 users—as a case for the "Research-Software-as-a-Service" (RSaaS) model, this presentation covers the technical aspects of creating and operating RSaaS, including integrations with EOSC/EGI and containerized architecture, and provides an overview of how to build and sustain research software services as a vital part of the modern research ecosystem.