Connectionists: 13ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python in Ghent, Belgium, 31 August—5 September, 2020

[Jakob Jordan]

13ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python
==============================================

a Summer School by the ASPP faculty and the Ghent University

https://aspp.school

Scientists spend more and more time writing, maintaining, and debugging
software. While techniques for doing this efficiently have evolved, only few
scientists have been trained to 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 and best practices which are standard in the industry, but 
especially
tailored to the needs of a programming scientist. Lectures are devised to be
interactive and to give the students enough time to acquire direct hands-on
experience with the materials. Students will work in pairs throughout 
the school
and will team up to practice the newly learned skills in a real programming
project — an entertaining 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 Master or PhD students and Post-docs from all 
areas
of science. Competence in Python or in another language such as Java, C/C++,
MATLAB, or R is absolutely required. Basic knowledge of Python and of a 
version
control system such as git, subversion, mercurial, or bazaar is assumed.
Participants without any prior experience with Python and/or git should work
through the proposed introductory material before the course.

We are striving hard to get a pool of students which is international and
gender-balanced.

Date & Location
===============
31 August–5 September, 2020. Ghent, Belgium.

Application
===========
You can apply online: https://aspp.school/wiki/applications

Application deadline: 23:59 UTC, Sunday 24 May, 2020

There will be no deadline extension, so be sure to apply on time. Be sure to
read the FAQ before applying: https://aspp.school/wiki/faq

Participation is for free, i.e. no fee is charged! Accommodation in the 
student
residence comes at no costs for participants. We are trying to arrange 
financial
coverage for food expenses too, but this may not work. Participants however
should take care of travel expenses by themselves.

Program
=======

• Version control with git and how to contribute to open source projects 
with GitHub
• Best practices in data visualization
• Testing and debugging scientific code
• Advanced NumPy
• Organizing, documenting, and distributing scientific code
• Advanced scientific Python: context managers and generators
• Writing parallel applications in Python
• Profiling and speeding up scientific code with Cython and numba
• Programming in teams

Faculty
=======

• Caterina Buizza, Personal Robotics Lab, Imperial College London UK
• Lisa Schwetlick, Experimental and Biological Psychology, Universität 
Potsdam Germany
• Nelle Varoquaux, CNRS, TIMC-IMAG, University Grenoble Alpes France
• Nicolas P. Rougier, Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, Institute of 
Neurodegenerative Disease, University of Bordeaux France
• Pamela Hathway, Neural Reckoning, Imperial College London UK
• Pietro Berkes, NAGRA Kudelski, Lausanne Switzerland
• Rike-Benjamin Schuppner, Institute for Theoretical Biology, 
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Germany
• Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 
Germany
• Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Red Hat Inc., Warsaw Poland

Organizers
==========

Head of the organization for ASPP and responsible for the scientific 
program:

• Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 
Germany

Local team:

• Nina Turk, Photonics Research Group, INTEC, Ghent University – imec 
Belgium
• Freya Acar, Office for Data and Information, City of Ghent Belgium
• Joan Juvert

Institutional organizers:

• Wim Bogaerts, Photonics Research Group, INTEC, Ghent University –imec 
Belgium
• Sven Degroeve, VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology, Ghent Belgium
• Jeroen Famaey, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, 
University of Antwerp – iMinds Belgium
• Bernard Manderick, Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit 
Brussel Belgium


Website: https://aspp.school
Contact: info at aspp.school