King’s College London Announces New Program Supporting Research Technical Professionals

KDL Director and Senior Research Software Analyst, Arianna Ciula and James Graham co-lead the project with Jeremy Cohen (Imperial College London), UCL and University of Westminster to nurture the training, careers, and recognition available to digital research technical professionals (RTPs).

Investment by the EPSRC, UKRI and DRI has funded £16 million to support focus on community-driven projects providing training and development for RTPs. RTPs are vital to the effective operation of research infrastructure across the UK. They use their skills and experience to support academic and industrial research, as well as train users in the latest techniques and methods.

The new £2m programme- A Strategic TEchnical Platform for University technical Professionals (STEP-UP), aims to plug gaps in their recruitment and nurture retention. Technical training will be available for digital RTPs across a range of skill levels, set up cross-institution secondment opportunities, and develop and run a mentoring scheme. This will work to create a people infrastructure of expert technical talent – along with career opportunities to support them.

Project Partners and Contributions:

EPCC, University of Edinburgh (UoE) will contribute access to HPC resources and related materials to support training while University of Oxford will provide support with developing training materials. ReSA will help to share outputs with an international audience. The Software Sustainability Institute will support activities including training and dissemination of project outputs. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will be a mentoring partner, offering a group of mentees and helping to review our mentoring scheme. TheSociety of RSE will help to publicise outputs and a trustee will contribute to the Operations Board.