Teaching

Spring 2024

ZOO5890-8: Foundations in Biological Programming

Course description: Across biological disciplines software is becoming an ubiquitous part of data generation and analysis pipelines. Especially as projects and data become more complex, the ability to conceptualize and write code that is correct, efficient, and maintainable is vital. Luckily, good software development, whether using R, python, or any other programming language, relies on only a few basic principles. The goal of this class is teaching those basic principles. Throughout the semester students will use these techniques to explore (through coding projects) a range of biological software applications such as agent-based modeling, remote sensing, and basic image processing. No prior experience with programming is expected. The class will be taught in python but assumes no prior knowledge of the language.