Sandra Gesing


Executive Director in the
US Research Software Engineers Association (US-RSE)
Senior Researcher at the
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
Member of the Leadership team in the program
National Model for Long-Term Support of High-Potential Kids in Unstable Housing
  Chicago Hopes for Kids, 4 Foundations Division

I have a 50% position as the Executive Director of US-RSE and a 50% position as Senior Researcher at SDSC. My research focuses on science gateways, computational workflows as well as distributed and parallel computing which inherently leads to highly interdisciplinary projects. As Outreach Area Lead of the Center of Excellence for Science Gateways I aim at supporting users, developers and providers of science gateways. I am especially interested in sustainability of research software, usability of computational methods and reproducibility of research results and I support open science initiatives. Sustainability of research software has many facets and via my roles in US-RSE (first as founding steering committee member and now as Executive Director) I advocate for improving career paths for research software engineers and for incentivizing their work via means beyond the traditional academic rewarding system. US-RSE has four major goals: RSE community building and interaction; advocacy for RSEs; providing resources; and promoting, encourageing, and improving diversity, equity and inclusion. I am passionate about increasing diversity in STEM. The program with Chicago Hopes for Kids, for example, supports children with high potential (ages 5-11 as starting point) living in unstable housing.

Before my positions at US-RSE and SDSC, I was a senior research scientist, the Scientific Outreach and DEI Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), University of Illinois System, Chicago. Prior to DPI, I was an associate research professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a computational scientist in the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. Before I moved to the US, I was a research associate in the Data-Intensive Research Group at the University of Edinburgh, UK, in the area of data-intensive workflows and in the Applied Bioinformatics Group at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in the area of science gateways and grid computing. Additionally, I have perennial experience as a project manager and system developer in industry in the US and Germany. As head of a system programmer group, I have led long-term software projects (e.g. infrastructure on web-based applications). I received my German diploma (equivalent to a Master’s degree) in computer science from extramural studies at the FernUniversität Hagen and my PhD in computer science from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Besides the lists on my website, you can find my publications also here.
Google ScholarResearchGate