Research IT

Specialised CDT Training Events

Earlier this month, Research IT provided training for the University's Regenerative Medicine Centre for Doctoral Training. The training was arranged by the Software Sustainability Institute, and was a two day Software Carpentry workshop. The instructors were Mike Jackson from EPCC at the University of Edinburgh and David Mawdsley from Research IT.

Software Carpentry workshops are 2 day workshops whose aim is to "help scientists and engineers get more research done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing".

In the workshop we covered using the Unix shell (Bash) to automate tasks, using Git to manage version control of work, and Python programming (R is often taught as an alternative to Python). Software Carpentry courses are highly interactive and are based around live coding and exercises. The use of slides is kept to a minimum. This approach allows users to rapidly gain practical experience of using the software, while teaching good software development practice.

Research IT already provide day-long workshops on Bash, Git and Python. We will be offering a number of two-day software carpentry workshops in the 2018/19 academic year. As with all our training courses, these will be free for University of Manchester staff and students. Our courses can be booked online through our training catalogue. Course dates for the 2018/19 academic year will be announced in late summer.

If you are interested in similar training for your CDT or Research Group then please get in touch.