Computation for 21st Century Biologists

Catalog description

This is a 3 credit course for graduate students that introduces the powerful open-source computing tools that are used in biological research for the creation, organization, manipulation, processing, analysis, and archiving of “big data”. This course is designed to prepare and enable students to use computational tools for bioinformatic applications in advanced courses and independent research projects. The primary topics covered are: data formats and repositories, command line Linux computing and scripting, regular expressions, super-computing, computer programming with PYTHON and R, data visualization with R, version control and dissemination of scripts and programs with GIT, typesetting with LATEX, and organizing data with SQL relational databases.  While not a formal requirement, it is assumed that students have a firm command of basic algebra.  Cross listed with BIOL 4360 and BIOL 5360