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Big Data in Biology Summer School

Introduction to Biocomputing: from files to functions to plots

Member for

2 years 7 months
Full name
Gary Chiang
Submitted by Gary Chiang on

This course will cover the Unix command line and data analysis in R within the context of biocomputing. We will start at the Unix command line and cover command line tools for manipulating data files, before transitioning to RStudio to engage with some more complex data analysis methods in R. The course will finish up with tidyverse tools and methods for visualizing data using ggplot2.

Preferred or Prerequisite Skills:
Some general familiarity with a programming language is assumed. Introductory topics in R will be covered, but at a relatively fast pace.

Computer Requirement:
Students should have their own laptop computer. UT EID is required for wireless access on campus. Please be sure you know your UT EID when you come to class. To obtain a UT EID, go here.

CB25033
Instructor

Matt Bramble (Bioinformatician, Bioinformatics Consulting Group, CBRS)

Matt Bramble joined the CBRS team after working at MD Anderson Cancer Center analyzing a wide range of NGS data in epigenomics. His areas of expertise include: Hi-C (chromatin conformation) analysis, mouse somatic variant analysis, and single cell RNAseq analysis. He has 10 years of experience with R and Python, and Master’s degrees from UT in Molecular Biology and Statistics.

Status
Closed
Location
Modality
Hybrid
Course Closes
Thu, May 22
Procard Disclaimer

If you use the UT ProCard for payment of courses, please be aware that you can only charge ONCE per 24 hour period. Any attempts to charge more courses will fail, and you will not be registered.

For example, you may add one to many courses for one student into your shopping cart at any one time, and charge them to the ProCard, and you should receive a "registration successful!" page at the end. This is because you registered ONCE for ONE student. If you attempt to register and pay again, for example, for a different student, this will trigger the UT ProCard security system to stop payment, and your registration will not be successful. A page stating this fact will occur after you attempt to process payment. It looks a lot like the "registration was successful" page.

Ways to avoid this are: use the ProCard after 24 hours have passed, or the student may use their credit card and be reimbursed later through the usual UT accounting methods, or process the registration with an IDT, otherwise known as an Interdepartmental Transfer (talk to someone in your department that handles the accounts).

Course Semester
Summer 2025
Course Type
Big Data in Biology Summer School
May 27 - May 30
Start Date
1:30 pm - 4:30 pm

See Registration and Payment.

Introduction to Core NGS Concepts and Tools

Member for

2 years 7 months
Full name
Gary Chiang
Submitted by Gary Chiang on

This five-day course provides an introduction to the concepts and vocabulary of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) with an emphasis on common protocols, tools and file formats used in NGS data analysis. Subjects covered include quality assessment and manipulation of raw NGS sequences (FastQC, cutadapt), read mapping (bwa, bowtie2), the Sequence Alignment Map (SAM) format, and tools for manipulating BAM files (samtools, bedtools). Participants will gain hands-on experience using these and other NGS tools in the Linux command line environment at TACC, as well as exposure to the many bioinformatics resources TACC makes available.

Preferred or Prerequisite Skills:
None. UNIX/Linux command line experience is not required, and becoming familiar with how to use the command line for NGS analysis will be a major focus of this course. However, to get a head start on developing this important skill you can register for our Introductory UNIX short courses.

Computer Requirement:
In order to participate fully in the hands-on exercises students should have their own laptop computer with an SSH client program. Macs have SSH available in the Terminal application. Recent Windows versions have an SSH client built into its PowerShell and Command Prompt programs, or PuTTy can be used if SSH is not available. A TACC Account and UT EID are also required. To obtain a UT EID, go here. To sign up for a TACC account, go here.

CB25034
Instructor

Anna Battenhouse (Associate Research Scientist and Bioinformatics Consultant, CBRS)

Anna Battenhouse is a research scientist in the lab of Dr. Edward Marcotte, is a member of UT Austin’s Bioinformatics Consulting Group, and leads the Biomedical Research Computing Facility’s mission to support IT and computational needs of the biological sciences community. She has extensive experience working with NGS data over the last 15+ years, and develops and maintains NGS analysis scripts for UT’s BioITeam. Anna received a B.A. in English Literature from Carleton College in 1978. After a long career in commercial software development Anna began her “retirement career” at UT Austin in 2007, and obtained a B.S. in Biochemistry in 2013.

Status
Open
Location
Modality
Hybrid, but in-person recommended
Course Closes
Thu, May 29
Procard Disclaimer

If you use the UT ProCard for payment of courses, please be aware that you can only charge ONCE per 24 hour period. Any attempts to charge more courses will fail, and you will not be registered.

For example, you may add one to many courses for one student into your shopping cart at any one time, and charge them to the ProCard, and you should receive a "registration successful!" page at the end. This is because you registered ONCE for ONE student. If you attempt to register and pay again, for example, for a different student, this will trigger the UT ProCard security system to stop payment, and your registration will not be successful. A page stating this fact will occur after you attempt to process payment. It looks a lot like the "registration was successful" page.

Ways to avoid this are: use the ProCard after 24 hours have passed, or the student may use their credit card and be reimbursed later through the usual UT accounting methods, or process the registration with an IDT, otherwise known as an Interdepartmental Transfer (talk to someone in your department that handles the accounts).

Course Semester
Summer 2025
Course Type
Big Data in Biology Summer School
June 2 - June 6
Start Date
9:00 am - 12:00 pm

See Registration and Payment.

Introduction to R for Biologists

Member for

2 years 7 months
Full name
Gary Chiang
Submitted by Gary Chiang on

This four-day course will introduce how to use the R programming language to analyze and visualize biological data on small and large scales. We will focus on the practical tools you need to quickly import your data, clean it up, analyze it, and then generate publication-quality plots. Along the way we’ll briefly address best practices for coding in R and how to effectively find help online. The structure of the course is “learn one, see one, do one”–for each topic (e.g., data manipulation or visualization), there will be a brief lecture on the basic principles, then a demonstration of the code in R, and then you will complete a similar problem in a coding worksheet. This course primarily uses the tidyverse ecosystem of R packages, and upon completion you’ll have used dplyr, tidyr, ggplot2, tidygraph, and more.

Preferred or Prerequisite Skills:
No previous programming experience is required.

Computer Requirement:
Students must have their own laptops that are able to connect to the utexas network. Prior installation of R and RStudio is not necessary but will be covered in this course.

CB25032
Instructor

Alexandra Lukasiewicz

Dr. Alexandra Lukasiewicz is a current post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Lydia Contreras, with extensive research experience in computational biology and bioinformatics. Their research focuses on biophysical systems modeling of protein-RNA interactions in bacteria. They have 6 years of experience programming in R, Python, and Unix/ Bash, as well as assisting in instruction of introductory programming courses.

Status
Closed
Location
Modality
In-person
Course Closes
Thu, May 15
Procard Disclaimer

If you use the UT ProCard for payment of courses, please be aware that you can only charge ONCE per 24 hour period. Any attempts to charge more courses will fail, and you will not be registered.

For example, you may add one to many courses for one student into your shopping cart at any one time, and charge them to the ProCard, and you should receive a "registration successful!" page at the end. This is because you registered ONCE for ONE student. If you attempt to register and pay again, for example, for a different student, this will trigger the UT ProCard security system to stop payment, and your registration will not be successful. A page stating this fact will occur after you attempt to process payment. It looks a lot like the "registration was successful" page.

Ways to avoid this are: use the ProCard after 24 hours have passed, or the student may use their credit card and be reimbursed later through the usual UT accounting methods, or process the registration with an IDT, otherwise known as an Interdepartmental Transfer (talk to someone in your department that handles the accounts).

Course Semester
Summer 2025
Course Type
Big Data in Biology Summer School
May 20 - May 23
Start Date
1:30 pm - 4:30 pm

See Registration and Payment.

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