Dr Catherine Smith awarded a fellowship by the Software Sustainability Institute

The Software Sustainability Institute cultivates sustainable research software to enable world-class research, working with researchers, developers and funders to identify best practice in scientific software. Each year, a number of fellowships are awarded to practitioners to enable them to follow a series of research and engagement activities. In 2019, there were 80 applicants, and the 17 successful Software Sustainability Institute Fellows have been announced, representing 13 research institutions in the UK. They include ITSEE's Technical Officer, Dr Catherine Smith, and Birmingham's Research Repository Advisor, Patricia Herterich. 

In addition to supporting ITSEE's various projects, including the CATENA project, Codex Zacynthius, the Estoria project and the Editio Critica Maior of the Gospel according to John, Dr Smith is also taking the lead in ITSEE's collaboration with the Multimedia Yasna project, an ERC Advanced Grant held by Prof. Almut Hintze at SOAS. Dr Smith is a member of Birmingham's Academic Programmers special interest group, and on the steering group for the College of Arts and Law Digital Humanities group. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. She co-supervises a number of doctoral students involved in digital research in the Schools of Philosophy, Theology and Religion, English, Drama and Canadian Studies, and Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music. She recently published a chapter on the history of the use of computers for New Testament textual editing, as well as contributing to the collation of the Principal Pauline Epistles in Latin.

In 2019, the Software Sustainability Institute received three male applications for each female one, which is representative of previous years. However, Dr Smith was amongst a majority of successful female candidates for 2019. The SSI say, "We believe that our friends and collaborators encouraged their female champions to apply, and this influenced the outcome ... This also indicates that we are doing a good job in facilitating and welcoming a friendly and diverse environment in the activities that we organise, e.g. Collaborations Workshop."