Connectionists: [ANN] Summer School "Advanced Scientific Programming in Python" in St Andrews, UK

[Tiziano Zito]

Advanced Scientific Programming in Python
========================================= 
a Summer School by the G-Node and the School of Psychology,
University of St Andrews

Scientists spend more and more time writing, maintaining, and
debugging software. While techniques for doing this efficiently have
evolved, only few scientists actually use them. As a result, instead
of doing their research, they spend far too much time writing
deficient code and reinventing the wheel. In this course we will
present a selection of advanced programming techniques,
incorporating theoretical lectures and practical exercises tailored
to the needs of a programming scientist. New skills will be tested
in a real programming project: we will team up to develop an
entertaining scientific computer game.

We use the Python programming language for the entire course. Python
works as a simple programming language for beginners, but more
importantly, it also works great in scientific simulations and data
analysis. We show how clean language design, ease of extensibility,
and the great wealth of open source libraries for scientific
computing and data visualization are driving Python to become a
standard tool for the programming scientist.

This school is targeted at PhD students and Post-docs from all areas
of science. Competence in Python or in another language such as
Java, C/C++, MATLAB, or Mathematica is absolutely required. Basic
knowledge of Python is assumed. Participants without any prior
experience with Python should work through the proposed introductory
materials before the course.

Date and Location
=================
September 11—16, 2011. St Andrews, UK.

Preliminary Program
===================
Day 0 (Sun Sept 11) — Best Programming Practices
  - Agile development & Extreme Programming 
  - Advanced Python: decorators, generators, context managers
  - Version control with git 
Day 1 (Mon Sept 12) — Software Carpentry
  - Object-oriented programming & design patterns
  - Test-driven development, unit testing & quality assurance
  - Debugging, profiling and benchmarking techniques
  - Programming in teams 
Day 2 (Tue Sept 13) — Scientific Tools for Python
  - Advanced NumPy 
  - The Quest for Speed (intro): Interfacing to C with Cython
  - Best practices in data visualization 
Day 3 (Wed Sept 14) — The Quest for Speed 
  - Writing parallel applications in Python
  - Programming project 
Day 4 (Thu Sept 15) — Efficient Memory Management
  - When parallelization does not help:
    the starving CPUs problem 
  - Data serialization: from pickle to databases
  - Programming project 
Day 5 (Fri Sept 16) — Practical Software Development
  - Programming project
  - The Pac-Man Tournament

Every evening we will have the tutors' consultation hour: Tutors
will answer your questions and give suggestions for your own
projects.

Applications
============
You can apply on-line at http://python.g-node.org

Applications must be submitted before May 29, 2011. Notifications of
acceptance will be sent by June 19, 2011.

No fee is charged but participants should take care of travel,
living, and accommodation expenses. 
Candidates will be selected on the basis of their profile. Places
are limited: acceptance rate in past editions was around 30%.
Prerequisites: You are supposed to know the basics of Python to
participate in the lectures. Please consult the website for a list
of introductory material.

Faculty
======= 
- Francesc Alted, author of PyTables, Castelló de la Plana, Spain 
- Pietro Berkes, Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis
  University, USA 
- Valentin Haenel, Berlin Institute of Technology and Bernstein
  Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Germany 
- Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Faculty of Physics, University of
  Warsaw, Poland 
- Eilif Muller, The Blue Brain Project, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale
  de Lausanne, Switzerland 
- Emanuele Olivetti, NeuroInformatics Laboratory, Fondazione Bruno
  Kessler and University of Trento, Italy 
- Rike-Benjamin Schuppner, Bernstein Center for Computational
  Neuroscience Berlin, Germany 
- Bartosz Teleńczuk, Institute for Theoretical Biology,
  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
- Bastian Venthur, Berlin Institute of Technology and Bernstein
  Focus: Neurotechnology, Germany 
- Pauli Virtanen, Institute for Theoretical Physics and
  Astrophysics, University of Würzburg, Germany 
- Tiziano Zito, Berlin Institute of Technology and Bernstein Center
  for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Germany

Organized by Katharina Maria Zeiner and Manuel Spitschan of the
School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, and by Zbigniew
Jędrzejewski-Szmek and Tiziano Zito for the German Neuroinformatics
Node of the INCF.  

Website:  http://python.g-node.org
Contact:  python-info at g-node.org