RSAA26 - A research software community event for Asia and Australia

Do you want to learn what others are doing in research software in your domain and in other domains? Or do you want to discuss with others how you balance researcher needs with good software practices? Or maybe you are the only person working on research software in your group?

If so, you might want to join us for RSAA26, the fifth online annual Research Software Asia Australia Conference, from the 25th to the 28th of August 2026. This is a joint partnership between the RSE Asia Association and the RSE Association of Australia and New Zealand. The theme for this year is “Research Software Without Borders” and the hashtag will be #RSAA26.

RSAA26 has concluded. The full conference page, including the Accessibility Fellowship Reports, is at RSEAA26.

Partners

We would like to thank our Asia Spotlight Partner ACCESS-NRI for supporting us, as well as our Accessibility Partners the Society of RSE, Linux Australia, and the Software Sustainabilty Institute. We would also like to thank our Trust and Identity Partner Australian Access Federation (AAF), and our Supporting Partner ARDC for their contribution to our conference.

Introducing Research Software Africa, Research Software Latinoamérica, and Equersa

We are thrilled to announce that we are helping to setup two new conferences Research Software Africa (RSA26) and Research Software Latinoamérica (RSLA26)!

We are creating one joint organising committee, while co-chairs for each conference still get to choose what happens at their event.

As part of this one joint committee, we have created Equersa, an umbrella organisation to help coordinate the conferences and to provide a unified front to global funders and stakeholders.

More on RSA26, RSLA26, and Equersa soon!

Accessibility Fellow Reports

Accessibility Fellow Report - An Thu Nguyen

Accessibility Fellow Report - Asmaa Rashad

Accessibility Fellow Report - Carlos Andres Olivera Caballero

Accessibility Fellow Report - Aishwarya Tulsi Vijay

All Accessibility Fellowship Reports

Why would someone go to RSAA26?

Some of the other motivations for attending might include:

To talk about difficulties in career progression and lack of recognition with others who work on research software
To share the interesting work you have done in research software
To learn from others how to make their research software more visible
To learn about how others create applications for researchers
To learn about how others streamline and scale their research workflows
To discuss with others how they balance researcher needs with good software practices
To discuss with others how they make their research software easier to use

Important Dates (2026):

Event	Opens on	Closes on	Notification of Result of Application
Call for Proposal	20th March	29th May	7th July
Call for Accessibility Fellowship	21st May	26th June	TBA
Call for Micro-grants	21st May	10th July	Communicated on a rolling basis
Call for Scholarships	21st May	14th August	Communicated on a rolling basis
Call for Volunteer (Reviewer, Session Chair)	20th March	Not Applicable	Communicated on a rolling basis
Event Registration (Early Bird, Scholarship, and Micro-grant)	15th June	10th July	Not Applicable
Event Registration (Standard)	11th July	14th August	Not Applicable

Call for Presentations

The Call for Presentations (CFP) for RSAA26 closed on 29th May. The program that resulted from it is on the RSAA26 Program page.

Author Guidelines

The author guidelines that applied to RSAA26 are in the RSAA26 Author Guidelines document.

Call for Workshops

The Call for Workshops for RSAA26 has closed. The workshops that were delivered are listed on the RSAA26 Program page.

Accessibility and Inclusivity

We were committed to creating a safe, accessible, and inclusive environment for all participants.

In 2022, Liz Hare provided a high-level accessibility report for the conference that we use as a benchmark for our performance.

RSAA26 offered scholarships for staff or students to participate for free, as well as 10 accessibility micro-grants valued at $50 AUD to help with internet, headphones, childcare etc.

Eligibility for the scholarships was based on prioritising and maximising the inclusion and participation of people who have been impacted due to the cumulative effects of discrimination on factors such as race, gender, disability, gender identity, financial status, and the intersectionality of that discrimination, as well as others not mentioned here.

Eligibility for the accessibility micro-grants was based on a similar approach.

If you have feedback about how well the conference met these commitments, please let us know by contacting the committee at info at rseaa.org.

The RSAA26 Accessibility Fellowship brought individuals with disabilities - such as those who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, have low vision, or have other disabilities - into the conference from our community and adjacent communities, so that we could be held accountable for the accessibility of the event. You can read the fellows’ reports in the Accessibility Fellow Reports section above.

Organising Committee Members

Jyoti Bhogal
Junran Lei
Linda Erlina
Keiran Rowell
Sanchit Ghule
Harsh Kalra
Rowland Mosbergen
Sandeep Kanabar
Peiyu Wu
Yifei Wang
Deepika Kashyap
Trish Radotic
Saranjeet Kaur
Amna Deakin
Gregory Poole
Seaumul Islam
Pao Corrales
Tyrone Chen
Xiaoya (YaYa)
Leon Nunes
Tasfia Trahman
Rania Aziz
Xiangdi (Allie) Hu

Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct is designed to provide all participants with community participation guidelines.

What is a Research Software Engineer (RSE)?

Research Software Engineer is a broad term for people who combine programming and research skills that have trouble defining their role and value within academia. e.g

researchers and academics who code,
generalists who bring communities together across the research and technical domains,
people who help train researchers to improve their code on HPC and Cloud systems, and
software engineers who work in the research domain.

Contact Us

If you would like to know more or have any questions, please contact the organising committee at [email protected] by email.

Marketing materials

Our marketing materials for RSAA26 are here.

Previous RSEAA conferences

*The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.*