1st Programming for Evolutionary Biology goes to the Americas
November 24th to December 12th 2014, Bogotá, Colombia
Website: http://evopco.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de
Organizers
- Katja Nowick, University of Leipzig, Germany
- Clara Isabel Bermúdez Santana, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
- Alvaro Perdomo-Sabogal, University of Leipzig, Germany
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (Dobzhansky, 1973). Today, evolutionary biology often involves the analysis of an unprecedented amount of information and supports many other disciplines, such as medicine (evolutionary medicine), behavioral biology (evolutionary psychology), ecology, and information transfer. Scientists have to analyze large datasets, which requires computational programming skills to design and apply own ideas into customized algorithms.
In this intensive course, students will learn how to survive in a Linux environment, get hands-on experience in two widely used programming languages (Perl and R), and statistical data analysis. The classes will be given by experts in the field and consist of lectures and exercises with the computer. The aim of the course is to provide the students with the necessary background and skills to perform computational analyses with a focus on solving research questions related to genomics and evolution. The philosophy of the course will be "learning by doing", which means that the computational skills will be taught using examples and real data from evolutionary biology for the exercises. During the course, students will also propose projects of their own interest and perform them as final projects in small groups under the supervision of a teaching assistant. This November school the school goes to Colombia. It is open for students from all countries, but specially, from the Americas. It is mainly targeted toward PhD students, MSc students and Postdocs of evolutionary biology or related research fields with no or little programming experience who want to become proficient in computational evolutionary biology in a couple of weeks.
Colombian partner organization:
- Asociación Primatológica Colombiana
Academic Committee
- Katja Nowick, Leipzig University, Germany
- Jan Aerts, Leuven University, Belgica
- Johanes Engelken, University Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Rui Faria, University of Porto, Portugal
- Sofia Robb, University of California Riverside, USA.
