ICDS News

Python coding workshops to fill gap for research community

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Institute for CyberScience (ICS) staff members will host a series of workshops this fall to benefit researchers who are eager to improve their computer programming skills or even start developing a new interest in programming. The workshops, which are free and open to all Penn State faculty, staff and students, will focus on the Python programming language and will take place throughout the fall semester. Advance registration is required.

Patrick Dudas and Adam Lavely, co-hosts of the workshop series, said they felt it was necessary to begin hosting these workshops based on conversations they had with researchers. As members of ICS’s Advanced Technical Services team, Lavely and Dudas both consult with members of the Penn State research community on ways to use high-performance computing methods and data visualization in research.

“Many of the faculty, staff and students who I’ve spoken to have a basic understanding of R [a programming language] but they tend to want to learn higher-end programming, or they are new to programming and want to know where best to start,” said Dudas, a data visualization software engineer with ICS, the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and the Eberly College of Science. “Python seems to be what is requested the most.”

The workshops also help expand the types of support that ICS provides to researchers, said Lavely.

“ICS has done a lot of training and support for people who are already used to working with supercomputers, but part of our mission is to help people compute, however they compute, wherever they compute,” said Lavely, a computational scientist with both ICS and Penn State’s Department of Aerospace Engineering. “That’s why I wanted to be involved.”

Lavely and Dudas designed the workshops to be modular, so that researchers could attend one or more workshops without needing to attend all workshops.

Workshop 1, the Basics, will be held three times, on Sept. 11, 18 and 25. It will cover the basics of Python and Jupyter, an open-source platform that allows users to see the results of their coding in a web browser. These workshops will be using resources hosted by Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) group.

Workshop 2, Beyond the Basics, will take place on Oct. 9 and 23 and will focus on importing and plotting data, Python libraries and saving different types of files.

Workshop 3, Speeding up Python, will take place on Nov. 6 and 13 and will highlight ways to speed up Python code using built-in tools.

Workshop 4, APIs and Python, will be held on Dec. 4 and 11 and will explore ways to use publicly available data, such as from Twitter’s application programming interface (API), in Python. Users will learn how to ‘scrape’ data and integrate it into Python.

Each workshop will be held from 3 to 4:30 in Room 106 of Boucke Building. Anyone interested in attending must register in advance.

Share

Related Posts

• Featured Researcher: Nick Tusay
• Multi-institutional team to use AI to evaluate social, behavioral science claims
• NSF invests in cyberinfrastructure institute to harness cosmic data
• Center for Immersive Experiences set to debut, serving researchers and students
• Distant Suns, Distant Worlds
• CyberScience Seminar: Researcher to discuss how AI can help people avoid adverse drug interactions
• AI could offer warnings about serious side effects of drug-drug interactions
• Taking RTKI drugs during radiotherapy may not aid survival, worsens side effects
• Cost-effective cloud research computing options now available for researchers
• Costs of natural disasters are increasing at the high end
• Model helps choose wind farm locations, predicts output
• Virus may jump species through ‘rock-and-roll’ motion with receptors
• Researchers seek to revolutionize catalyst design with machine learning
• Resilient Resumes team places third in Nittany AI Challenge
• ‘AI in Action’: Machine learning may help scientists explore deep sleep
• Clickbait Secrets Exposed! Humans and AI team up to improve clickbait detection
• Focusing computational power for more accurate, efficient weather forecasts
• How many Earth-like planets are around sun-like stars?
• Professor receives NSF grant to model cell disorder in heart
• SMH! Brains trained on e-devices may struggle to understand scientific info
• Whole genome sequencing may help officials get a handle on disease outbreaks
• New tool could reduce security analysts’ workloads by automating data triage
• Careful analysis of volcano’s plumbing system may give tips on pending eruptions
• Reducing farm greenhouse gas emissions may plant the seed for a cooler planet
• Using artificial intelligence to detect discrimination
• Four ways scholars say we can cut the chances of nasty satellite data surprises
• Game theory shows why stigmatization may not make sense in modern society
• Older adults can serve communities as engines of everyday innovation
• Pig-Pen effect: Mixing skin oil and ozone can produce a personal pollution cloud
• Researchers find genes that could help create more resilient chickens
• Despite dire predictions, levels of social support remain steady in the U.S.
• For many, friends and family, not doctors, serve as a gateway to opioid misuse
• New algorithm may help people store more pictures, share videos faster
• Head named for Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering
• Scientific evidence boosts action for activists, decreases action for scientists
• People explore options, then selectively represent good options to make difficult decisions
• Map reveals that lynching extended far beyond the deep South
• Gravitational forces in protoplanetary disks push super-Earths close to stars
• Supercomputer cluster donation helps turn high school class into climate science research lab
• Believing machines can out-do people may fuel acceptance of self-driving cars
• People more likely to trust machines than humans with their private info
• IBM donates system to Penn State to advance AI research
• ICS Seed Grants to power projects that use AI, machine learning for common good
• Penn State Berks team advances to MVP Phase of Nittany AI Challenge
• Creepy computers or people partners? Working to make AI that enhances humanity
• Sky is clearing for using AI to probe weather variability
• ‘AI will see you now’: Panel to discuss the AI revolution in health and medicine
• Privacy law scholars must address potential for nasty satellite data surprises
• Researchers take aim at hackers trying to attack high-value AI models
• Girls, economically disadvantaged less likely to get parental urging to study computers
• Seed grants awarded to projects using Twitter data
• Researchers find features that shape mechanical force during protein synthesis
• A peek at living room decor suggests how decorations vary around the world
• Interactive websites may cause antismoking messages to backfire
• Changing how government assesses risk may ease fallout from extreme financial events
• Symposium at U.S. Capitol seeks solutions to election security
• ICS co-sponsors Health, Environment Seed Grant Program
• ICS Affiliate named AGU fellow
• Differences in genes’ geographic origin influence mitochondrial function