Research Software Engineering Summer School

Book Now (in person)

Outline

Transform your research code into professional software!

Learn best-practice design tips to accelerate your code and automate testing for professional applications.

Attend Research Software Engineering (RSE) Summer School at UCL to move beyond programming to learn how to construct reliable, readable, and efficient research software. Brought to you by UCL Advanced Research Computing (ARC).

In this intensive five-day summer school, you will learn in a collaborative environment with an emphasis on practical techniques and technologies to effectively build and maintain complex code.

Designed for participants at any career stage that wish to improve their technical skills towards creating software that is more readable, maintainable, and reproducible.

You will learn how to interact with common research data formats by using Python and its ecosystem, however the concepts you’ll learn will be applicable to any programming language.

Open to UCL staff and students, as well as external participants.

This summer workshop will cover:

• Advanced usage of version control systems;
• Interacting with Research data;
• Best-practice design techniques;
• How to test your programmes automatically;
• How to create packages, and
• How to accelerate your programmes.

In this workshop we will use Python but the skills learnt will be applicable to any programming language.

The course will take place in-person in a cluster room at UCL and the classes will have their own dedicated support by members of ARC, along with the lecturers, who will help to answer questions and resolve issues.

Though there may be computers that participants could use in the cluster room, it’s preferred that everyone brings their own laptops so they can take home what they’ve learnt. Setup instructions will be made available two weeks before the workshop. ARC will also provide drop-in online sessions to help with installation issues before the workshop.

Prior knowledge required

Participants need to be familiar with the basics of Git and GitHub, competent in at least one programming language, and familar/competent using concepts like variables, control flow, and functions. This could be through a formal course, a shorter workshop like Software Carpentry, or previous experiences.

Prior experience using foundational libraries of PyData and Scientific Python ecosystem is helpful.

ARC Education deliver regular Software Carpentry workshops that cover the prior knowledge required for this summer school.

Objectives

By the end of the week, participants will be able to:

• Understand git branches and why they are useful, apply git techniques to find problems in history, and collaborate with others using GitHub flow.
• Distinguish between different file formats useful in research, judge which format is better for their purposes, and construct pipelines to load, analyse and write research data,
• Recognise good software development practices, select between different object oriented designs for different tasks, and implement refactoring safely.
• Describe different types of software tests, write positive and negative tests, and use automated testing techniques (property based and mutation testing).
• Construct python packages to ease sharing and installation, implement command line interfaces, and organise software documentation in a helpful way to your users.
• Understand different optimisation techniques, apply different tools to measure how efficient code runs, and use various tools that helps to accelerate code.

Location

The workshop will take place in a cluster room on the UCL Bloomsbury campus.

Closest stations Warren Street station (7min) Euston Square station (9min) Tottenham Court Road station (10min) Euston station (11min) Kings Cross St Pancras station (26min)

Timetable

22-26 of June 2026 - UCL Torrington Place Training Centre, 1-19 Torrington Place, Fitzrovia, London WC1E 7HB.

Day	Location	Time	Details
Monday	B07 Teal Room (Basement), UCL Torrington Place Training Centre	9:30	Summer School day 1¹ Registration and welcome
		10:00	Managing collaborative projects with git
		12:45	Lunch
		13:45	Managing Python environments
		16:30	Reception?
Tuesday	B07 Teal Room (Basement), UCL Torrington Place Training Centre	9:30	Summer School day 2¹ Managing Scientific data
		12:00	Debugging Python
		12:45	Lunch
		13:45	Designing programs in Python
		17:00	Meet RSEs at 90HH
Wenesday	B07 Teal Room (Basement), UCL Torrington Place Training Centre	9:30	Summer School day 3¹ Testing Python programes
		12:45	Lunch
		13:45	Keeping your code readable and sustainable
		18:00	Evening event - Musical
Thursday	B07 Teal Room (Basement), UCL Torrington Place Training Centre	9:30	Summer School day 4¹ Documenting your projects
		12:45	Lunch
		13:45	Packaging your project
		18:30	Evening dinner
Friday	Function Space (1st Floor), 90 High Holborn, WC1V 6LJ	9:30	Summer School day 5¹ Making your code faster
		12:45	Lunch
		13:45	Group work
		17:00	End

¹ Each day of the RSE Summer School is formatted as an all-day workshop comprised of 4 sessions (1 hour 30 mins each). There will also be two 15 minute breaks (tea, coffee, fruit and biscuits included) and one hour for lunch (12.45pm - 1.45pm, lunch provided).

Note: The workshop will run from 9.30am on Monday until 5.00pm on Friday, but other aspects of the timetable are provisional and subject to change.

Evening Social Events

Any summer school experience in London would not be complete without the chance to explore the city. As part of the programme, we invite all participants to join the social activities outlined below:

• Monday: An evening reception, to welcome you and give you a chance to network with other participants and teaching staff.
• Tuesday: A free evening to explore London.
• Wednesday: Evening event (RSE Summer School 2025 included a West End theatre show! Details to be shared before start of workshop).
• Thursday: Evening dinner Note: all group social activities are included in the course fee and subject to change

Accommodation

Participants are responsible for securing their own accommodation and this should be arranged before arrival and funded independently.

UCL student accommodation is available and accepts short-term bookings from external visitors:

• Frances Gardner house (£)
• Ian Baker house (£)

Alternatively, the following hotels are less than 10 minutes walk to the teaching venue:

• Morgan Hotel (££)
• Mentone Hotel (££)
• Holiday Inn (£££)
• Mercure Hotel (£££)
• Hilton DoubleTree (££££)

Fees

	Cost	UCL members discount
Early Bird (book before 22/05/2026)	£1,200
Standard (book on or after 22/05/20256	£1,500	£750 (with code and verified ucl.ac.uk email address*)

*Email ARC-Education for UCL staff and students discount code.

This fee includes:

• A welcome pack
• Refreshments during breaks
• All lunches (from 12.45pm - 1.45pm)
• All social events as listed in the 'evening social events' tab above.

Cancellations

Please note that no refunds will be given for cancellations made within two weeks of the start date or for non-attendance. Cancellations must be received in writing at least two weeks before the start of the event and will be subject to an administration charge of 10% of the course fee. It is regretted that no refunds will be made within two weeks of the course date. 

Online / self-paced materials

Online materials are included so you can use to revise the topics covered in this summer workshop. These materials include the following:

• Full electronic notes
• All programming code.
• Interactive quizzes for each chapter, and opportunities to collaborate with other learners.
• Support will also be available through a forum, where you can ask questions related to the course materials.