The STEP-UP RSLondon Conference 2025

Monday 7th July 2025, 9.30am – 5pm, Central London venue (to be announced soon!)

The 2025 Conference

For 2025, the former RSLondonSouthEast conference is becoming the STEP-UP RSLondon Conference! Join us for the 6th edition of our regional community conference where we’re further expanding the event to enhance our community’s support for “digital Research Technical Professionals” (dRTPs). For the first time, we will have separate tracks focusing on research software, research data and research computing infrastructure.

Following three years of hosting the workshop at Imperial College London, we’ll be moving to an external Central London venue this year, and expanding to enable us to welcome a larger groups of attendees. We will also be dedicating part of the day to separate, parallel tracks focusing on research software, research data and research computing infrastructure.

The event will bring together dRTPs, researchers, academics and individuals in a variety of related roles who work with or are interested in research software, research data and research computing infrastructure. This is the result of a key element of our work within the STEP-UP project to broaden the established RSLondon community to support data and infrastructure professionals.

Regional communities provide a great opportunity to meet and present work to peers at nearby institutions and organisations without a significant commitment in terms of travel costs and time that national or international conferences and events often present. The conference will provide a chance to tell members of the London and South East dRTP community about the work that we’ve all been doing over the past year. To make the most of this and to provide the chance to meet and network with colleagues, collaborators and friends from across the region, this will be an in-person only event.

While this conference aims to provide a regional focus on research software, data and computing infrastructure activities, and offer an opportunity to present work to a regional audience, it also aims to help participants develop links with the wider dRTP community. As such, the conference is also open to participants from elsewhere in the UK and beyond. Whether you’re already an experienced technical professional or researcher developing software, working with research data, or managing specialist computing infrastructure, or whether you’re new to the space and are keen to develop your skills and meet others working in the field, the event will provide an excellent opportunity to engage with the community and develop your research technology skills.

There will be plenary sessions as well as a range of technical presentations across the three technical tracks - software, data and computing infrastructure. As in previous years we will also have a poster session as well as providing lots of opportunities for networking and discussion.

Call for Submissions

We are accepting short abstracts for three submission types:

  • 15-minute talks (maximum 300 word abstract)
  • 5-minute lightning talks (maximum 200 word abstract)
  • posters (maximum 200 word abstract)

All conference submissions must be made via the EasyChair platform: Submit an abstract

See the full Call for Submission of Abstracts for full details.

Details of the workshop organising committee and programme committee can be found on the Committees page.

Important dates

  • Abstract submission deadline: 23:59 BST (UTC+1) on Wednesday 21st May 2025
  • Acceptance notification: Thursday 6th June 2025
  • Conference registration closes: Friday 20th June 2025

Venue

The conference will be hosted at a Central London venue which will be announced shortly.

Registration

Workshop registration will open in mid-May.

Schedule

The workshop will take place on Monday 7th July 2025, starting at 10.00am and finishing at approximately 5pm.

The full workshop schedule will be published in early June 2025.

Code of Conduct, Diversity and Accessibility & COVID-19 Guidance

Please read our workshop Code of Conduct and Diversity and Accessibility statement. Accessibility requirements can be specified at registration time but please contact us if you have any questions.

While we recognise that the pandemic is over and COVID-19 is no longer a concern for most people, there are still people for whom this is not the case due to underlying health issues, vulnerable family members or other reasons. We want everyone to feel comfortable to attend our event and masks will be available for anyone who wishes to wear one. We also advise you not to attend the event if you feel unwell or are exhibiting symptoms of respiratory illness on the day of the workshop. This will help all workshop participants to feel safe.

Sponsors

We would like to thank our event sponsors, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Society of Research Software Engineering without whom staging this event would not be possible.

EPSRC support for the event is provided through the STEP-UP project, grant EP/Y530608/1.

Contact Us

If you have any workshop-related queries, please e-mail info@step-up.ac.uk