Staying Cool: Mid-year Review from The Turing Way Community 🌱
Explore The Turing Way Book and connect with us via our start page.
“Captain, there is only one logical direction in which to go. Forward.” - Spock in “Please Stand By”
Hello Turing Way friends!
We’re officially at the beginning of the second half of the year, can you believe it?
Sending our best wishes to everyone experiencing the European heat wave. Temperatures may be rising, but The Turing Way community members are still the coolest 😉.
How has the last six months been for you? We'd love to hear about it in Slack. As for us, read on to find out what we've been up to!
TLDR:
We hosted three Book Dash events: at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee (led by Dr. Malvika Sharan), at the Dutch Hub (led by Dr. Esther Plomp), and online with the Book Dash Working Group (led by Arielle Bennett).
Many members of our community attended the Software Sustainability Institute’s Collaborations Workshop 2026.
We held our June Community Forum, featuring exciting updates from the JupyterHub project and news about the Steering Committee elections.
The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: The Turing Way Community & Scriberia (2024).
Summary: Book Dash May 2026!
The May Book Dash took place from 18-21 May, with our public share-outs on 22 May.
This year, we were delighted to host two local hubs: one in Aruba and another at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Both hubs were a great success and left participants eager for another Book Dash later in the year! 🥳
Alongside the in-person events, we also hosted our usual virtual sessions, resulting in some fantastic contributions across The Turing Way. Community members collaborated on a wide range of issues and pull requests, helping to move several exciting projects forward.
A full report on the May Book Dash will be available soon 😃
Join our Collaboration Café in July!
In case you missed it, our Collaboration Café has moved to a new time slot! Starting now, you can join us on the first and third Wednesday of each month, 14:00–16:00 UTC.
This change came out of a community conversation about making the space more accessible across time zones. You can read the full discussion and share your thoughts here.
The next call is on July 15 14:00-16:00 UK time. Feel free to drop in to meet the community, do some focused work, or otherwise.
We hope to see you there — bring your work, your questions, or just your curiosity! ☕
Thank you for your participation at the Community Forum!
Our June Community Forum brought together wonderful folks from across The Turing Way community. Here are a few highlights from the session:
CZI EOSS DEI funds for JupyterHub: We enjoyed hearing about the incredible progress the JupyterHub project has made through its funding, as well as celebrating the exciting news of a new Community Manager joining the project.
Steering Committee Elections: June is election season for The Turing Way Steering Committee, and we were pleased to share the results of the recently concluded elections. Congratulations to our 2026–2027 Steering Committee members:
Chair: Malvika Sharan
Secretary: Jim Madge
Chair-Elect: Esther Plomp
Secretary-Elect: Precious Onyewuchi
Thank you to all our community members that have served on the Steering Committee during 2025/26, and a special thanks to those stepping down from committee positions, including Kirstie Whitaker as Chair, Arielle Bennett as Secretary, Liz Hare from Accessibility WG, and Emma Karoune from Book Dash WG.
Our new Steering Committee
A huge thank you to Yanina Bellini Saibene for serving as our external facilitator throughout the election process.
Thank you to everyone who joined and contributed — these conversations are what make this community so special.
The Turing Way Team
Applications Open: Hidden REF Competition 2026!
The Hidden REF Competition celebrates the full range of research contributions, recognising outputs and roles that are often overlooked by traditional research assessment frameworks.
With 25 categories spanning diverse research activities, the competition highlights the people and work that help research thrive beyond conventional academic measures. Submissions are open until 13 September 2026, with winners announced at the awards ceremony in November.
Recognition of all research outputs and people in research is really important to The Turing Way Community. We encourage you to enter yourself, or a colleague, to be celebrated in the Hidden Ref Competition.
Key dates:
Submissions open: 26 May 2026
Submissions deadline: 13 September 2026
Awards ceremony & announcement of results: Dates to be communicated
Learn more and submit an entry via the Hidden REF Competition website.
Community Highlight: Professor James Hetherington's Inaugural Lecture
We are very happy to highlight the Inaugural Lecture from Professor James Hetherington at the University College London, Faculty of Engineering on Engineering Computational Science.
Professor Hetherington walks us through his journey in computational science, and explores the ways this domain can be understood as an engineering discipline. There is emphasis on the trustworthiness and reliability of engineering in computational science, leading into the emerging impact of generative artificial intelligence on this field.
Hetherington is Professor of Computational Science and Director of UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre.
He holds a special place for us as the first person to allocate funding - from the AI for Science and Government strategic award to the Alan Turing Institute - to The Turing Way. He has been a great inspiration to our community members, and those of the broader research software engineering movement.
You can watch this on YouTube.
The Turing Way out in the world 🚀
Collaborations Workshop 2026 (CW26)! 🚀🚀🚀
Members of The Turing Way community joined researchers, software developers, managers, funders, and other professionals at Collaborations Workshop 2026 (CW26), the annual event hosted by the Software Sustainability Institute.
The workshop brings together people from across disciplines to explore important ideas in research and software, share experiences, and spark new collaborations. It was fantastic to see members of our community contributing to discussions, connecting with peers, and helping shape conversations around open, collaborative, and sustainable research practices.
Members of the Turing Way at CW26 in a group photo, flaunting their Turing Way socks.
Research Software Alliance (ReSA)! 🚀🚀🚀
Dr Kirstie Whitaker was an author of two reports at the Research Software Engineering in the Age of Generative AI: Building a Community Vision workshop
When Do Working Groups Meet? 📅
Wondering when The Turing Way working groups get together?
The best place to check is our open community calendar, where all working group meetings and community events are listed.
You can find more information in our welcome page (getting updated!) or via the Community Handbook.
Whether you're a current member or curious about getting involved, the calendar is your go-to for staying in the loop!
Recurring Community Events and Calls ☕
Hosted all throughout the month, our recurring community calls are important and engaging spaces where you can learn more about The Turing Way!
✅ Collaboration Cafe: Every first and third Wednesday of the month. The next call is on July 1, 14:00-16:00 UK time. Feel free to drop in to meet the community, do some focused work, or otherwise.
✅ Community Management Working Group: every Tuesday, 14:00 UK time.
✅ Funding and Sustainability Meetings: every second Friday of the month, at 15:00 UK time.
✅ Infrastructure Maintainers Monthly Meetings: every second Tuesday of the month, at 16:00 UK time.
Get involved! Contribute to The Turing Way!
Last year we evolved into a community-led governance model: to ensure the project remains sustainable and impactful, we have established several Working Groups dedicated to its ongoing maintenance and growth.
Are you passionate about open science, reproducible research, or community building? We invite you to join us!
How to get involved:
Explore: Check out our Working Groups (currently under development).
Connect: Express your interest via this short onboarding form.
Get involved + Connect with us!
You are welcome to join The Turing Way community and learn more about the project.
If you'd like to contribute to the next newsletter, please contact the Community Management Working group on Github or Slack! Email theturingway@gmail.com for more information.
Did you miss the last newsletters? Check them out here.
Please note: We are no longer affiliated to The Alan Turing Institute and hence would not be using turingway@turing.ac.uk email.
Please use theturingway@gmail.com email to reach out to the project in the future.