ByteSized dRTP is a series of events providing key research software, research data and research computing infrastructure skills in just 90 minutes! STEP-UP’s series’ of “ByteSized” sessions are based on “byte-sized” format developed in the UNIVERSE-HPC project.

Each ByteSized dRTP session includes a companion podcast episode released through the Code for Thought podcast series. The topic areas have been expanded from a focus on research software skills to a wider group of topics that are intended to support the whole digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTP) community. This will include sessions covering research software, research data and research computing infrastructure topics.

For any questions related to the series, or if you’d like to run a session on a topic that we’ve not yet covered, you can get in touch with the STEP-UP team.

Past STEP-UP ByteSized dRTP sessions

Photo by Gj7 via Wikimedia Commons

Series 1, Episode 2: ByteSized dRTP: Floating point numbers

Date: Thursday 26 March, 2026  14:00-15:30 GMT

Instructor(s): Peter Schmidt

Links:

Registration: Sign up here

For this second ByteSized online class, we dive into the weird and wonderful world of numbers, floating point numbers to be precise. How do computers represent them? Why do some computations go horribly wrong? How do I choose the “right” data type?

Prerequisites

  • We will be using Python (3) as the language to demonstrate floating point calculations.
  • A link to a GitHub repository will be provided in the class, where you can download the examples discussed in the class.

If you don’t have the required prerequisites for the session, you are welcome to join the session and watch the instructor working through the interactive aspects of the session.

Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash (cropped)

Series 1, Episode 1: ByteSized dRTP: Research Software Sharing, Publication, & Distribution Checklists

Date: Thursday 26 February, 2026  14:00-15:30 GMT

Instructor(s): Richard Acton

Links:

Registration: Sign up here

Join Richard to hear about the key properties of sharing your code, publishing your projects, and how you can distribute code to your user community, all made easier to track with the help of Richard’s checklist tool.

Prerequisites: In order to participate in the interactive part of this ByteSized session you will need:

  • To have a GitHub or GitLab account.
  • To have an open source project that you own and are happy to use as an example with which to try the application of the sharing, publication, and distribution checklists that will be presented in this session.

If you don’t have the required prerequisites for the session, you are welcome to join the session and watch the instructor working through the interactive aspects of the session.