Nordic Basic Scientific Computing 2026

Aalto Scientific Computing (ASC) invites you to its early 2026 meetup - a gathering of everyone interested in supporting scientific computing (and a celebration of the diverse work that makes it all possible). Aalto Otaniemi Campus, 2-4 February 2026.

The first half is a Finnish+friends RSE meetup , the second half is a meetup of local unit research and scientific computing teams more targeted to service staff. The overlapping middle day has events that are interesting to both audiences. People are welcome to attend both halves, but we expect many attendees will only attend one half or the other.

Venn diagram with "research software engineers" on the left and "People who work in a local SciComp team" on the right, with day 1, 2, and 3, with day 2 overlapping.

This isn’t a time to advertise how great our tools and services are. It’s a time to look under the hood and talk about all the problems we encountered on the way (and the problems we expect in the future) so we can get better.

Topics

You can submit talks/events, and also there will time for last-minute “unconference” submissions. We can talk about whatever is interesting to us: from past achievements to future directions.

  • Academic experience as a research engineer.

  • Practical support (research software engineering, both practices and how we run our teams).

  • HPC cluster management (day to day problems and usability for small projects and new users); infrastructure usability.

  • Teaching and mentoring of our users (practical teaching done for the previous two categories).

  • Our teams compared to giant national infrastructures; what is our role?

Schedule (general plan)

See also

Schedule

  • Day 0 (Su, 1 Feb 2026): If anyone arrives early, grilling dinner in a Finnish forest (if enough people want to brave the cold).

  • Day 1 (Mo, 2 Feb 2026): RSE meetup

  • Day 2 (Tu, 3 Feb 2026): RSE/SciComp overlap day: events, lunch, evening dinner, some social activities scattered between.

  • Day 3 (We: 4 Feb 2026): SciComp team meetup: events 9-12, lunch.

Example sessions:

  • Plenty of time for submitted events and networking.

  • Cool things and problems: each organization presents three cool things they have done lately and three problems they are facing right now. This serves as a basis for networking during the rest of the event.

  • Panel discussion with junior computational researchers: Panel discussions are usually full of the most senior people the organizers can find. In this discussion, we’ll hear from junior researchers, about how usable they find computing systems and the onboarding process.

Quick info

See also

Practical info

Location: Dipoli, Aalto University, Espoo, Helsinki area, Finland

Price: Free (you pay your own food) or at-cost (depending on the number of registrations). Aalto Scientific Computing sponsors the facilities.

Food: Reservations at restaurants in the campus area.

Registration: To be opened later.

Online attendance: this will probably be possible.

Key dates:

  • 1 November: Registration opens (closes when full)

  • 7 January: First submission deadline, voting on talks begins

  • 1 January: Reconfirmation begins

  • 15 January: Final deadline for reconfirmation for meal reservations