Center for Computational Biology

Workshops and Bootcamps

CCB Bioinformatics Bootcamp

The Center for Computational Biology offers a 5-day “Introduction to Programming for Bioinformatics” bootcamp. The goals of this course are to introduce students to Python, a simple and powerful programming language that is used for many applications, and to expose them to the practical bioinformatic utility of Python and programming in general.

The course will allow students to apply programming to the problems that they face in the lab and to leave this course with a sufficiently generalized knowledge of programming (and the confidence to read the manuals) that they will be able to apply their skills to whatever projects they happen to be working on. The course assumes no programming experience, and there are no prerequisites for the course.

The next “Introduction to Programming for Bioinformatics” bootcamp will be offered from June 13-17, 2022. Registration for the bootcamp will open in April.

Please check our FAQ page for any questions you might have.

Please email ccbadmin@berkeley.edu if you would like to be added to the bootcamp mailing list and be informed when registration is open for the next bootcamp.

The schedule below shows an approximation of what is covered in the course.

Day 1 Morning: The Very Basics: Hello, World! Variables, and Printing

Afternoon: Functions and Methods
Day 2 Morning: Control flow – conditional statements and loops

Afternoon: Data structures – Lists and Tuples
Day 3 Morning: Data structures – Dictionaries

Afternoon: Reading and Writing from Files
Day 4 Morning: Modules, Numpy, Scipy

Afternoon: Visualizing data with Matplotlib
Day 5 Morning: Pandas and Data Manipulation

Afternoon: Applications and Next Steps