UCL Biosciences Computational Training

November/December 2025

Instructors: Contributors from UCL Biosciences and ARC, plus Learn To Discover and Microsoft

General Information

Thank you for your interest in Computational Training coordinated by UCL Division of Biosciences and Centre for Advanced Research Computing (ARC). The training will be a series of five half-day workshops providing an introduction and overview of the essential skills required for computational research in the biosciences.

The workshop details are outlined below. The sessions link together so we recommend that you attend all workshops to get the most out of the series as a whole. The sessions will be run by computational experts from Biosciences, ARC, Learn To Discocer, and Microsoft. We hope this will create an interesting and varied environment for participants to explore themes related to computational research.

Please note, this workshop will be taking place in-person only.

When: November/December 2025; Add to your Google Calendar.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (listed below).

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. If you require any adjustments or support to attend, please let us know ahead of the workshops.

We are dedicated to providing a positive and accessible learning environment for all.

Glosario is a multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

Workshop Recordings: The workshops are designed to be interactive rather than lecture-based, with lessons that build upon one another. To foster a positive learning environment, we strongly recommend that participants join in real time. As a result, workshop recordings are not recommended and will not be available.

Contact: Please email james.d.gilbert@ucl.ac.uk for more information.

Who can attend?: This workshop is open to UCL Biosciences staff and postgraduate students. Registrations exceeded capacity so attendance is limited to those who have received an email confirming your place.


Collaborative Notes

We will use this collaborative document for chatting, taking notes, and sharing URLs and bits of code.


Surveys

Please be sure to complete these surveys before and after the workshop.

Pre-workshop Survey

Post-workshop survey to be added.

Schedule

Weds Nov 5th

13:00 - 17:00 🐍 Coding with Python
IOE - Bedford Way (20) Room 736

Weds Nov 12th

13:30 - 16:30 🔁 Reproducibility, version control with git and conda environments
Charles Bell House G04

Weds Nov 19th

13:30 - 16:30 💾 Data Management / 📚 Computational documentation
IOE - Bedford Way (20) Room 418

MONDAY Nov 24th

14:00 - 17:00 🤖 AI: LLMs to deep learning
IOE - Bedford Way (20) Room 425

Weds Dec 3rd

13:30 - 16:30 📈 Using UCL High Performance Compute (HPC) clusters
Charles Bell House G04

Setup

To participate in a workshop, you will need access to software as described below. In addition, you will need an up-to-date web browser.

Prerequesites. The tools given below are essential for everything we will do in the course (and for a lot of computational biology work). You must make sure you have them all available before attending the workshops. Workshops will not have any time available for helping with setup problems. If you are having problems installing anything, please do one of the following:

Instructions for installing software can be found here. You will need: