The Research Computing Center (RCC) conducts workshops on a variety of topics relevant to research computing. Past workshop topics have included introductory, intermediate, and advanced seminars on programming languages; data management tools and best practices; and sessions focused on using Midway and other RCC resources. They are generally structured as a brief lecture followed by a hands-on session.

In addition to workshops led by the RCC staff, the RCC routinely invites industry experts and hardware and software vendors to teach courses focused on specific systems. 

 

2022-2023 RCC Workshop Series

Winter Workshops 

Title

Date

Time & Location Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the Research Computing Center 

Jan 24th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Ross Hyman

Introductory

 

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

Feb 3rd

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Debasmita Samaddar

Introductory

 

Analysis of Genetic Data 1: Inferring population structure

Feb 7th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

 

Writing Clean Code in Python

Feb 9th 2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Aleksandr Lykhin Introductory  

Using GPUs with Python

Feb 14th 1 - 3 PM, Virtual Trung Nguyen (+NVIDIA) Intermediate  

Computational reproducibility through virtual environment and Containerization

Feb 16th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

 

Running Machine Learning Pipelines on RCC High Performance Computing (HPC) Systems

Feb 23rd

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room J.D. Laurence-Chasen

Introductory

 

 

Fall Workshops 

Title

Date

Time & Location Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the Research Computing Center 

Oct 13th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Trung Nguyen

Introductory

 

Large-scale data analysis in R

Nov 15th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Peter Carbonetto

Advanced

 

Introduction to Deep Learning Models in GIS

Nov 16th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

 

Running Machine Learning Pipelines on RCC's HPC Systems

Dec 1st 2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Teodora Szasz/J.D. Laurence-Chasen Introductory  

Parallelization in time - a new dimension to exploit supercomputing

Dec 6th

2 - 4 PM, Zar Room Debasmita Samaddar

Intermediate

 

 

2021-2022 RCC Workshop Series

Summer Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Time and length

Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the RCC

June 28th

2 pm - 2 hours Debasmita Samaddar Introductory  

Creating Interactive Plots in Python

July 14th 2 pm - 2 hours Brooke Luetgert Intermediate  
Introduction to Machine Learning in GIS July 19th 2 pm - 2 hours Parmanand Sinha Intermediate  
Introduction to R for Data Analysis July 26th 2 pm - 2 hours Peter Carbonetto Intermediate  
Job scheduling on Slurm - Best Practices Aug 2nd 2 pm - 2 hours Debasmita Samaddar Introduction  
ArtAI: Making Art with AI Aug 9th 2 pm - 2 hours J.D. Laurence-Chasen and Teodora Szasz Intermediate  

Spring Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Time and length

Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the RCC

April 5th

2-4 PM

In person

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

 

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

April 12th

2-4 PM

In person

Trung Nguyen

Introductory

Link(GitHub)

Introduction to GPU Software and Tools on Midway

April 26th

2-4 PM

 

virtual

John Parker (+NVIDIA)

Introductory

 

Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis

May 10th 2-4 pm  Teodora introductory  

Analysis of Genetic Data 2: Mapping Genome-wide Associations

May 17th

2-4 PM

In person

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Link(GitHub)

Getting Started with Text Analysis in Python

May 24th

2-4 PM

In person

Brooke Luetgert

Introductory

Link(GitHub)

Winter Workshops (Completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the RCC

Jan 11th

John Parker

Introductory

 

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

Jan 18th

Peter Carbonetto

Introductory

Hands-on workshop on Geo-coding

Feb 1

Parmanand

Introductory

Link (GitHub)

Parallel Programming in Python

Feb 15

Kaihua Ding & John Parker

Intermediate

Link (GitHub)

Introduction to Tensorflow

Feb 22

Kaihua Ding

Introductory

Link (GitHub)

Impactful Data Visualization

Mar 1

Teodora Szasz and Lydia (Visualization Engineer @ Nike))

Introductory

 

Creating Interactive Plots in Python

Mar 8

Brooke Luetgert

Intermediate

 

Analysis of Genetic Data 1: inferring population structure

Mar 15

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

 

Fall Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Materials

Introduction to the Research Computing Center 

Oct 12th

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

 

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

Oct 14th

Kaihua Ding

Introductory

Introduction to Geo-spatial Computation

Oct 19th

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

GitHub

Managing Research Data with Globus

Oct 20th

Globus

All levels

Link

Fundamentals of Deep Learning (Remote)

Oct 26th

NVIDIA

Introductory

Info

Data Analysis With MATLAB (Remote) Oct 28th MATLAB All levels

Introduction to the Digital Humanities


Nov 5th

Jeff Tharsen

Introductory

 

Best Coding Practices for Python Projects

Nov 11th

Teodora Szasz and Callista Christ

Introductory

 

Introduction to Data Mining -- Mining News, Public Sentiments, and Basic Textual Analysis with Python 

Nov 18th

Kaihua Ding

Introductory

Link

Introduction to R for Data Analysis

Nov 23rd

Peter Carbonetto

Introductory

 

Text Analytics and spaCy in Python

Nov 30th

Brooke Luetgert

Intermediate

 

Data Science and Machine Learning on Google Cloud 

Dec 9th

Teodora Szasz and Callista Christ

Introductory

 

2020-2021 RCC Workshop Series

Summer Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides and materials

Introduction to the Research Computing Center

July 6th

Brooke Luetgert

Beginner

 
Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices July 8th Jeffrey Tharsen Beginner  

Introduction to GIS and Spatial Analysis

July 13th

Parmanand Sinha

Beginner

GitHub

Introduction to SQL

July 20th

Ping-Chang Lin

Beginner

GitHub

Best Coding Practices for Python Projects

July 27th

Teodora Szasz and Callista Christ (RCC); Mark Mims and Luis Ibanez (Google)

Beginner

GitHub

Natural Language Processing with GPT-3 (by OpenAI)

Aug 3rd

Jeffrey Tharsen

Intermediate

GitHub

Introduction to Python for Data Analysis with COVID-19 data

Aug 10th

Brooke Luetgert

Beginner

GitHub
Introduction to Raster data and satellite Imagery Aug 12th Parmanand Sinha Intermediate GitHub

Reproducible Research: How to Make It Real!

Aug 17th

Teodora Szasz and Callista Christ (RCC); Mark Mims and Luis Ibanez (Google)

Beginner

 

Using GPUs with Python

Aug 19th

John Parker and Kris@NVIDIA

Beginner

Not available

Large-scale data analysis in R

Aug 24th

Peter Carbonetto

Advanced

Githib

 

Spring Workshops (Completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides

Introduction to the RCC

April 6th

Ping-Chang Lin

Introductory

Interpreting Deep Learning Models Using Explainable AI

April 13th

Teodora Szasz 

Intermediate

Introduction to Spatial Statistics with R

April 20th

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

Link GitHub

Analysis of Genetic Data 2: Mapping Genome-wide Associations

April 27th

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Link GitHub

Navigating the Data Use Agreement (DUA) Process

April 28th Secure Data Enclave    

Data Privacy in Research

April 29th Secure Data Enclave    

Working with Sensitive Research Data in the Secure Data Enclave (SDE)

April 30th Secure Data Enclave    

Introduction to Midway3: UChicago’s Newest High-Performance Computing Cluster 

May 4th

Jonathan Skone

Introductory

Advanced Methods for Text Visualization

May 14th

Jeffrey Tharsen

Intermediate / Advanced

Link GitHub

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

May 18th

Ping-Chang Lin

Intermediate

Introduction to GitHub 

May 25th

Brooke Luetgert

Beginner

Link GitHub

Winter Workshops (Completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides

Introduction to the RCC

Jan 21st

Jeff Tharsen

Introductory

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

Jan 26th

Peter Carbonetto

Introductory

Link GitHub

Introduction to Spatial Analysis with R

Feb 2nd

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

Link GitHub

Spatial Statistics for GIS using R

Feb 9th

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory/ Intermediate

Link (GitHub)

Intro to Regression Analysis with Python

Feb 16th

Brooke Luetgert

Introductory

Link (GitHub)

Analysis of Genetic Data 1: inferring population structure

Feb 23rd

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Link (GitHub)

Advanced Interactive Visualizations for Data Analysis (Bokeh + TensorSpace)

Feb 26th

Jeff Tharsen

Intermediate / Advanced

Link (GitHub)

Introduction to translating between Python and R

Mar 9th

Ping-Chang Lin

Introductory/ Intermediate

Link (GitHub)

Introduction to Deep Learning using PyTorch and fastai

Mar 16th

Teodora Szasz 

Introduction

Link

Introduction to Midway3: UChicago’s Newest HPC Cluster

Mar 18th Jonathan Skone Introductory

 

Fall Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides 
Introduction to the RCC and Computational Resources for Humanists and Social Scientists Oct 13th Brooke Luetgert and Jeffrey Tharsen Introductory

Introduction to the RCC

Oct 13th

Teodora Szasz 

Introductory

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

Oct 15th

Teodora Szasz 

Introductory

Introduction to the Digital Humanities

Oct 20th

Jeffrey Tharsen

Introductory

Introduction to the RCC and Computational Resources for Humanists and Social Scientists - Repeat Oct 23rd Brooke Luetgert and Jeffrey Tharsen Introductory

Data Wrangling or Manipulation in R

Oct 27th

Huma Asif

Introductory

Introduction to the Digital Humanities - Repeat Oct 30th Jeffrey Tharsen Introductory

Large-Scale Data Analysis in R
Nov 3rd Peter Carbonetto Advanced Link (GitHub)

Introduction to ArcGIS and Arcpy

Nov 10th

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

Guidelines for Neural Network Models - Performance Assessment and improvement 

Nov 17th

Ping-Chang

Intermediate

Link (GitHub)
Navigating the DUA Process Nov 18th Secure Data Enclave Introductory  
Data Privacy in Research Nov 19th Secure Data Enclave Introductory  
Working with Sensitive Research Data in the Secure Data Enclave (SDE) Nov 20th Secure Data Enclave Introductory  
Introduction to GDAL

Nov 24th

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

Link (GitHub)
Scientific computing using 
Julia programming language
Nov 30th Khemraj Shukla Introductory Link
Introduction to Python for Data Analysis

Dec 1st

Brooke Luetgert

Intermediate

Link
Code Optimization on Midway2 HPC cluster

Dec 8th

Khemraj Shukla

 

Intermediate

Link (Git Hub)

2019-2020 RCC Workshop Series

Summer Workshops (Completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides 

Introduction to the RCC

June 30th

Teodora Szasz 

Introductory

Parallel Programming in Python: Multithreading and Multiprocessing

July 7th

Jonathan Skone

Intermediate

 

Can a Neural Network write poetry? Leveraging next sentence prediction with transformers BERT and GPT-2

July 16th

Jeffrey Tharsen

Intermediate

 

Running jobs on RCC systems using the SLURM batch scheduler and Best Practices

July 21st

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

Introduction to CUDA-C and FORTRAN programming July 23rd Khemraj Shukla Introductory

Guide to generative adversarial networks

July 28th

Ping-Chang

Intermediate

Docker and Singularity: Using Containers on Midway

July 30th

Jonathan Skone

(with guest Marco Govoni)

Introductory

 

Introduction to R for data analysis

Aug 4th

Peter Carbonetto

Introductory

 

Introduction to HPC for GeoComputation

Aug 13th

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

 

Creating Interactive Data Plots in Python

Aug 18th

Brooke Luetgert

Intermediate

 

Deep Learning for COVID-19 Medical Imaging 

Aug 25th

Teodora Szasz 

Intermediate

Spring Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Slides

Introduction to the Research Computing Center

4/13/2020

Khemraj Shukla

Introductory

COVID-19 Epidemic Data Visualization

4/14/2020

Teodora Szasz (RCC) and Luis Ibanez (Google)

Introductory

 

COVID-19 Epidemic Data Visualization (Repeat)

4/17/2020 Teodora Szasz (RCC) and Luis Ibanez (Google) Introductory  

Analysis of Genetic Data 2: mapping genome-wide associations

4/28/2020

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

 
Introduction to ArcGIS 4/30/2020 Parmanand Sinha Introductory  

Introduction to CUDA-C programming

5/7/2020

Khemraj Shukla

Introductory

 

Introduction to GDAL

5/12/2020

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

 

Performance Guidelines of Neural Network Models, Perspective of Operation Efficiency

5/19/2020

Ping-Chang Lin

Intermediate

 

Introduction to Python for Data Analysis

5/26/2020

Brooke Luetgert

Introductory

 

Deep Learning Frameworks for Natural Language Processing: BERT and GPT-2

6/2/2020

Jeffrey Tharsen

Advanced

 

Winter Workshops (Completed)

 

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Location

Introduction to the RCC

1/21/20

Jonathan Skone

Introductory

Zar Room

Analysis of Genetic Data 1: inferring population structure

1/28/20

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Zar Room

Introduction to ArcGIS

2/4/20

Parmanand Sinha

Introductory

Zar Room

Intermediate ArcGIS

2/11/20

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

Zar Room

Introduction to Computer Vision in Python

2/20/20

Teodora Szasz 

Intermediate

Zar Room

Neural Networks for Word Vectors and Word Embeddings in Python

2/25/20

Jeffrey Tharsen

Intermediate

Zar Room

Performance Guidelines of Neural Network Models

3/10/20

Ping-Chang Lin 

Intermediate

Zar Room

Web Scraping and Text Parsing in Python

3/17/20

Brooke Luetgert

Introductory

Zar Room

Fall Workshops (Completed)

 

Title

Date

Presenter

Level

Location

Introduction to the RCC

10/15/19

Birali Runesha

Introductory

Zar Room

Introduction to Transfer Learning for Image Classification

10/17/19

Teodora Szasz

Advanced

Zar Room

Exploring Geospatial Raster Images

10/22/19

Parmanand Sinha  

Introductory

Zar Room

Introduction to the Digital Humanities

10/24/19

Jeffrey Tharsen

Introductory

Zar Room

Introduction to Information Data Visualization 

10/29/19

Kazutaka Takahashi

Introductory

Zar Room

Mind Bytes

11/5/19

   

Ida Noyes

Parallel Programming in Python

11/12/19

Jonathan Skone

Intermediate 

Zar Room

How to Use DaLI - an Introduction

11/14/19 Kazutaka Takahashi Introductory

Zar Room

Large-Scale Data Analysis in R

11/19/19

Peter Carbonetto

Advanced

Zar Room

Introduction to Deep Learning for Image Classification

11/26/19

Ping-Chang

Introductory

Zar Room

Data Wrangling and Visualization in R

12/3/19

Nicholas Marchio

Introductory

Zar Room

Introduction to Python for Data Analysis

12/10/19

Brooke Luetgert

Introductory

Zar Room

 

Summer Workshops (completed)

 

Title

Date

Time

Presenter

Level

Location  

Introduction to the Research Computing Center

6/25/19

2-4 PM

Hossein Pourreza

Introductory

Zar Room Download

Introduction to R for Data Analysis

7/2/19

2-5 PM

Peter Carbonetto

Introductory

Zar Room  

Introduction to Linux and Bash Shell

7/9/19

2-4:30 PM

Yuxing Peng

Introductory

Zar Room  

Introduction to R Shiny

7/16/19

2-4 PM

Nicholas Marchio

Introductory

Zar Room  

Text Analysis for Non-Western Scripts

8/6/19

2-4 PM

Jeffrey Tharsen

Introductory

Zar Room  
Data Therapy 1 8/8/19 3:30-4:30 PM Eamon Duede      

Introduction to Information Data Visualization

8/13/19

2-5 PM

Kazutaka Takahashi

Introductory

Zar Room  

Introduction to Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL)

8/20/19

2-4 PM

Parmanand Sinha 

Intermediate

Zar Room  
Data Therapy 2 8/22/19 3:30-4:30 PM Marynia Kolak   Zar Room  

Deep Learning for Computer Vision in Python

8/27/19

2-6 PM

Teodora Szasz

Intermediate

Zar Room  
Data Therapy 3  9/5/19 3:30-4:30 PM Peter Carbonetto   Zar Room  

Spring Workshops

Title

Date

Time

Presenter

Level

Location

Introduction to Python programming

4/2/2019

2-5 pm

Jonathan Skone

Basic

Zar Room

Large-Scale Data Analysis in R

4/11/2019

2–5 pm

Peter Carbonetto

Advanced

Zar Room

Analysis of Genetic Data 1: inferring population structure

4/16/2019

2–5 pm

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Zar Room

Introduction to Spatial Raster data with R

4/18/2019

2-5 pm

Parmanand Sinha

Intermediate

Zar Room

Navigating the Data User Agreement Process 4/22/2019 2-3 pm Kali Frampton Open to all Zar Room

Analysis of Genetic Data 2: mapping genome-wide associations

4/23/2019

2–5 pm

Peter Carbonetto

Intermediate

Zar Room

Data Privacy in Research 4/24/2019 1-2 pm Stefan Quick Open to all Zar Room
Working with Sensitive Data in the SDE 4/25/2019 2-3:30 pm Hossein Pourreza Open to all Zar Room
Amira/Avizo Introductory Workshop 5/1/2019 9 am - 12:30 pm Amira Expert Open to all Zar Room

Advanced Methods for Textual Analysis: Stylometry, Topic Modeling and Text Visualizations

5/7/2019

2–4 pm

Jeffrey Tharsen

Intermediate

Zar Room

Optimizing Performance with Intel AVX

5/9/2019

2-4 pm

Yuxing Peng

Intermediate

Zar Room

Introduction to Network Analysis and Visualization

5/16/2019

2-4 pm

Kazutaka Takahashi

Intermediate

Zar Room

Introduction to Geocoding

5/21/2019

2–5 pm

Parmanand Sinha

Basic

Zar Room

Introduction to GPU programming with OpenACC

5/28/2019

2-4 pm

Hossein Pourreza

Intermediate

Zar Room

In-situ Visualization: Visualizing Simulation Data as they are Generated

6/4/2019

2–4 pm

Teodora Szasz

Advanced

Zar Room

Winter Workshops (completed)

Title

Date

Level

Location

Introduction to RCC

1/15/2019

Introductory

BSLC 018

Python Programming for Data Science

1/22/2019

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Large-scale data analysis in R

1/29/2019

Advanced

BSLC 018

Interactive 3D Computer Graphics using WebGL

2/5/2019

Intermediate

BSLC 018

GPU programming with CUDA

2/12/2019

Advanced

BSLC 018

Introduction to Data Visualization using D3

2/19/2019

Intermediate

BSLC 018

An Introduction to the Data Lifecycle Instrument: DaLI

2/21/2019

Introductory

BSLC 018

Parallel Programming in Python: MPI for Python

2/26/2019

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Digital Textual Analysis for Large-Scale Repositories (HathiTrust and others)

3/5/2019

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Fall Workshops (completed)

 

Title

Date

Level

Location

Introduction to the RCC

10/2/18

Introductory

BSLC 018

Introduction to Computer Vision in Python

10/9/2018

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Parallel Programming with OpenMP

10/16/2018

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Introduction to Data Visualization

10/23/2018

Introductory

BSLC 018

Introduction to R for data analysis

10/30/ 2018

Introductory

BSLC 018

Introduction to machine learning

11/6/2018

Introductory

BSLC 018

Parallel Programming in Python: Multithreading and Multiprocessing

11/13/2018

Intermediate

BSLC 018

Introduction to the Digital Humanities

11/27/2018

Introductory

BSLC 018

Reinforcement learning

12/4/2018

Advanced

BSLC 018

 

A note about experience levels

The RCC communicates the expertise needed to get the most out of a workshop by labeling it with an experience level. An Introductory level workshop presupposes little or no familiarity with the topic at hand. An Intermediate level workshop requires some degree of familiarity with the methods being used. An Advanced level workshop is for users who are already fluent with the methods and tools involved.

Each workshop's description includes the workshop's experience level (Click on course title for details). If you are unsure whether a given workshop will be taught at too advanced or too basic a level for you, feel free to contact the RCC for information.

Below is a small selection of workshops we have offered in previous years:

  • 3D Visualization Day: Amira and Avizo
  • Advanced Tutorial on Stata
  • Analysis of Genetic Data, Part 1
  • Analysis of Genetic Data, Part 2
  • Big-Data movement made easy: An Introduction to Globus-Online (CI - RCC)
  • Computational Quantum Chemistry at the RCC
  • Computational Tools for Bio/Chemists
  • COMSOL 5.0 & Application Builder Workshop
  • Data Visualization Strategies and Digital Cartography (D3)
  • Debugging and Optimization on Midway with Allinea's DDT Parallel Debugger
  • Designing Interactive Data Visualizations (D3/Javascript)
  • Dissecting LAMMPS: An Open Development Environment for Particle Systems Simulation
  • GPU Accelerations in MD Simulations and QM Calculations
  • GPU Computing with NVIDIA
  • GPU-CUDA Programming
  • Hands-on Parallel Programming with OpenMP
  • HPC for Molecular Engineering
  • Image Analysis in Python
  • Intel Software for High-Performance Parallel Applications
  • Intel Software Tools: Compilers, Libraries, and Parallelism
  • Interactive Visualization with iPython and Jupyter Notebook
  • Introduction to Data Visualization
  • Introduction to GPU Computing with CUDA
  • Introduction to Hadoop
  • Introduction to Linux
  • Introduction to Midway2
  • Introduction to Python
  • Introduction to R: the Power of the Data Frame
  • Introduction to Stata
  • Introduction to the Digital Humanities
  • Introduction to the Research Computing Center
  • Introduction to Unix at the Research Computing Center
  • Job Scheduling on Midway
  • MATLAB Optimization
  • MPI + OpenMP: A Hybrid Scheme of Parallel Programming and Computing
  • Parallel Computing with MATLAB
  • Parallel Programming and Optimization for Intel Architecture
  • Parallel Programming Using MPI
  • Practical Introduction to Midway
  • Programming with SWIFT Scripts
  • Project Management Tools at RCC
  • Python for HPC
  • Research Data Management Resources at UChicago
  • Running and Optimizing Your Code on Midway
  • Speed Up Your Python
  • Stata: Data Management, Analysis, and Graphic Fundamentals
  • Text Analysis and Visualization Strategies for Digital Humanists
  • Understanding Image Segmentation
  • VSCSE Data Intensive Summer School