The state of AI for research software engineering

Presentations from Steve van Tuyl from the Academic Data Science Alliance and Elle O'Brien from the University of Michigan on Jan 6, 2026 in the Consortium for the Advancement of Scientific Software (CASS; https://cass.community/) User/Developer Experience working group.

Steve Van Tuyl presents: Impacts of Generative AI on the RSE Workplace - Where are we and where might we go next?

Over a four month period, we engaged with over 100 research software engineers (RSEs) at a number of community events (SciPy, RSECon 25, US-RSE 2025, SC25) to better understand the impacts of Generative AI (GenAI) on the work of Research Software Engineers (RSEs). Through these conversations we have heard about how GenAI has impacted RSEs in academia, industry, and government roles, what promise they see in the technology, and what resources would be helpful for navigating the GenAI landscape. We’ll close the presentation with a view into next steps for developing these resources with the RSE community to ensure the profession thrives through this technological step-change.

Elle O’Brien presents: More Code, Less Validation: How Scientists Are Adopting AI Coding Tools

This talk presents findings from a survey of 868 research scientists about their adoption and use of generative AI tools for programming. Adoption is highest among junior researchers and those with less programming experience, with ChatGPT overwhelmingly preferred over targeted developer tools like GitHub Copilot. Scientists reporting the highest perceived productivity gains tend to report less programming experience, lower adoption of development practices like testing and code review, and accepting larger chunks of generated code at once. These patterns raise concerns about research software quality as AI-generated code enters scientific workflows with limited quality control mechanisms.