CHARTED – The Connecting Hub for Advancing the RTP Talent Enabling DRI

Research Technical Professionals (RTPs) are an integral part of the modern process of scientific discovery, being involved in almost every aspect of computational research. As computational research grows in new scientific disciplines and assimilates emerging technologies, the need for skilled RTPs is increasingly urgent. However, there are few established routes into RTP careers, and most skills need to be discovered, developed and progressed on the job. Developing the required skills is often challenging and time-consuming. Without an understanding of the skill landscape, it is hard to know what to learn, in what order, to what level or where to find appropriate content. This problem becomes bigger when required skills are not clearly defined or fully aligned with specific roles. The increasingly diverse backgrounds of RTPs also make training provision more dificult - it is harder to define the skills baseline and to put the learning process in the context most appropriate to the learner.

Many community efforts aim to improve the accessibility of training, including work on skills definitions, curated catalogues of training resources, learner personas, learning pathways and flexible training opportunities. Those efforts are often isolated and limited to single projects or initiatives. To address the skill shortage issue, it is necessary to engage all stakeholders of the training ecosystem to make it more inclusive, transparent and easier to navigate, including making training resources more FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable), capturing skills required across different roles and sectors, and aligning them with professional development opportunities.

The primary goal of CHARTED is to connect training opportunities with skills, skills with roles, roles with people, and people with people; and develop tools and frameworks to make the ecosystem for professional development easier to navigate. It will engage with employers across different sectors, the RTP communities and other initiatives (national and international) to create the HUB that will help current and future RTPs develop and advance their skills and improve their career opportunities.

CHARTED will provide a link between key relevant efforts - past, ongoing and future, both in the UK and worldwide - leveraging existing things and further innovating, including:

  • Making the process of discovery and development of skills and careers easier for current and prospective RTPs (eg by providing tools and resources necessary to create self-directed learning pathways);
  • Providing a platform for educators, trainers and training providers (in the UK but internationally) to connect ongoing efforts for making HPC training content more FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable);
  • Driving the international effort into developing necessary tools (eg self-learning diagnostic tools) and best practice guides for learning and teaching RTP skills to both professionals and students;
  • Engaging with industry to better capture skills required in different roles, highlighting different job profiles, and to better facilitate knowledge, experience and talent exchange;
  • Providing opportunities to develop and run community driven activities and schemes covering the whole pipeline e.g. professional mentoring programmes, champions and fellows’ networks, upskilling schemes, internships, and ‘returning to work’ schemes.

The CHARTED team:

  • EPCC, University of Edinburgh – Weronika Filinger (Project Lead), Neil Chue Hong (Co-lead and Flexible Fund Manager), Lucy Norris (Network Coordinator), Steven Carlysle-Davies (Research Software Engineer)
  • Imperial College London - Jeremy Cohen (Co-lead and Community Building Manager), Eirini Zormpa (Community Manager)
  • University of Southampton – Steve Crouch (Co-lead and HUB Development Manager), Philly Broadbent (Research Software Engineer)