Keynote Speakers

Dr. Arfon Smith is a Senior Fellow at Schmidt Sciences on the Science Systems team. His current interests span research software and the evolving role of research software engineers – including how generative AI is reshaping the practice and identity of research software engineering – research data-management infrastructure, and AI as a science accelerator, from differentiable simulation codes and ML surrogates to new models for automation, participation, and innovation in research. Arfon is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), a co-founder of the Zooniverse citizen-science platform, and holds a visiting appointment at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Prior to Schmidt Sciences, Arfon was a Director of Product at GitHub, where he led AI product development including GitHub Copilot. With extensive product, data science, and engineering background – especially in open source – he loves building deep partnerships across product, design, data science, and engineering and is fluent in the language of each. Arfon has led teams across organizations of varied sizes, scales, and sectors, including founding and leading the Data Science Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, home of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Leah Wasser is the founder and Executive Director of pyOpenSci, a community of nearly 400 researchers, engineers, and maintainers working to make developing and maintaining research software more accessible, sustainable, and human. Through open peer review, contributor mentorship, and accessible training, pyOpenSci helps scientists build better software, get credit for it, and develop the technical skills to participate in open source.

Leah’s work sits at the intersection of open source, open science, and open education — with inclusion at the center. She believes the communities behind research software matter as much as the code itself, and has spent her career building equitable systems that allow more people to participate and thrive.

As GenAI reshapes how software gets built, Leah is focused on protecting the human networks and reciprocal relationships that make open source sustainable — not just technically, but socially.

She has built nationally recognized programs at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the University of Colorado Boulder. Leah holds a PhD in ecology and is an active open source maintainer. In her free time, you can find Leah on the trails with her rescue pup or at the gym lifting weights and swinging around bars and rings.

Claire Wyatt is the Community Manager for Research Software Engineering at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany and part of the team developing JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering). JuRSE is a community of practice for everyone doing research software engineering at FZJ and aims to improve good practice in research software development. It delivers multiple community initiatives and support for scientific code. Claire also works with the Helmholtz Platform for Research Software Engineering (HiRSE) to deliver an RSE themed seminar series online, open to all. She regularly volunteers her time on the organising committees of the annual RSE Conferences in Germany and the UK.

Before moving to Germany, Claire was the RSE Community Manager in the UK at the Software Sustainability Institute, based at the University of Southampton. In that time, she was part of the core team that grew the UK community to over 4000 people on Slack, over 600 members of the Society and an annual conference of 350 delegates with many high profile sponsors. Claire was a founding member of the UK’s Association of Research Software Engineers and a founding Trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering for 3 years and held the role of Vice-President for one year. She received the award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to the RSE Community’ in 2022.