While biological data continues to grow exponentially in size and quality, many of biology PhD students are not trained adequately in the computing skills necessary for leveraging this information deluge. In the course "Computing Skills for Biologists: Building a Toolbox", Dr. Stefano Allesina will provide a hands on introduction to a valuable toolbox for the effective analysis of biological data.

Based on the author's experience teaching scientific computing at the University of Chicago and his textbook on the same subject, he will emphasise the automation of repetitive tasks and the construction of pipelines for data organization, analysis, visualization, and publication. Stressing practice rather than theory, he will draw from actual biological data and solve cogent problems spanning the entire breadth of biological disciplines, including ecology, genetics, microbiology, and molecular biology. 

Beginners will benefit from an overview of the many tools that compose the computational toolbox of the practicing computational biologist,…