Dr. Rachael Ainsworth is the Research Software Community Manager for the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) and based in the eScience Lab of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. She manages SSI's Fellowship Programme and Collaborations Workshop series, promoting better research through better software practices. She is passionate about openness, transparency, reproducibility, wellbeing and inclusion in research and STEM more broadly, and is a vocal and active Open Research Advocate.
She was previously a Research Associate at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and PhD Student at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and Undergraduate Student Intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She received her BSc in Physics from the University of Tennessee and her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Dublin, Trinity College. Her research involved observing jets from young stars with next-generation radio telescopes to investigate the physical processes that assemble stars like our Sun.
She is also an SSI Fellow, FOSTER certified Open Science Trainer, Mozilla Open Leader, TEDx speaker, and Founder of the Manchester chapter of the women in data meetup group HER+Data MCR.
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HER+Data MCR ("Her plus Data Manchester") is a community working to connect, inspire, support and empower the NW UK’s Women in Data. We aim to bring together anyone who identifies as a woman and has a connection to data - whether they work with data, would like to work with data, and/or simply have an interest in data. The scope is intended to be broad to be inclusive of as many women within STEM as possible while also maintaining a focus for the community of practice: data. We give women the opportunity to talk about data science, analytics, research, visualisation, marketing, business, software and applications. Members’ backgrounds range from academia to industry, and from students to CEOs. The community holds monthly meetups for networking and showcasing role models, masterclasses for upskilling in data fields (CVs, personal branding, interviewing techniques, salary negotiation), hackathons, socials and facilitates mentorship.
In 2020, we have begun opening our events to everyone through collaborations with other communities such as Open Data Manchester and Women in Tech North. If you are interesting in collaborating on an event, please get in touch!
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