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Events & Workshops

The FAS Informatics Group creates hosts events such as workshops, both online and in-person. Here is a list of upcoming events, as well as current and past workshop content!

Upcoming Events & Workshops

Fall 2026 at a glance

Dates Workshop / session Location Sign up
Sept 1 or Sept 4 · 10:30AM GenAI Week 1: Setting up Claude Virtual Sept 1 · Sept 4
Sept 10 & 11 · 1:00PM GenAI Week 2: Launching GenAI tools on FASRC clusters Virtual Register
Sept 15 & 22 · 9:00AM–12:00PM GenAI Weeks 3 & 4, Track 1: 🦠🧬 E. coli evolution NW 453 Register
Sept 18 & 25 · 9:00AM–12:00PM GenAI Weeks 3 & 4, Track 2: 🐀⚡ Cambridge rat boxes NW 425 Register
Sept 29 – Oct 15 · Tue & Thu, 9:00AM–12:00PM Introduction to Python (6 sessions) NW 453 Coming soon
Date TBD Comparative Genomics User Group In person, TBD Join mailing list

Signing up for any GenAI session? You need an active Harvard Claude Code subscription — request one at least 3–5 business days beforehand.

Workshops

Data Analysis Using GenAI Tools

Four-week series · September 1–25, 2026 · with FASRC

Want to use agentic AI tools like Claude on your own research data, but are wary of letting one loose on it? Only used chat windows or code completion, and curious what the "agentic" part actually buys you? Over four weeks we go from setup, to running these tools securely on FASRC clusters, to analyzing a real dataset end to end.

Registration is per session — sign up for all that interest you.

Pre-requisite: Harvard Claude code subscription

You must activate your Claude code subscription at least 3-5 business days before the date of the first workshop you sign up for below. Fill out the HUIT AI request form to get that process started:

Request Claude account

Week 1: Setting up Claude (Virtual)

September 1 and September 4, 2026, 10:30AM (virtual)

Identical sessions

The sessions on September 1 and 4 will be identical. Register for the one that best fits your schedule.

Learn how to set up and use the Harvard-provided Claude code subscription.

Topics covered:

  • Harvard IT and FASRC AI use policy
  • How to set up Claude Code and different ways to interact with it
  • General LLM tips & tricks

Register for Session 1: Sept. 1, 2026 10:30AM Register for Session 2: Sept. 4, 2026 10:30AM

Week 2: Launching GenAI Tools on FASRC Clusters (Virtual w/ FASRC )

Designed for researchers of all experience levels. These sessions demonstrate how to deploy HUIT-approved GenAI tools, such as coding agents and extensions, in Jupyter, RStudio, VS Code, and the command line. This training will also emphasize on the best practices for safeguarding research data while leveraging GenAI capabilities on FASRC clusters in alignment with institutional security, privacy, and data protection standards.

Sessions 1 & 2 cover different materials. Session 1, while not a pre-requisite, is a precursor to Session 2 and it will be beneficial to attend it prior to Session 2.

Session 1: September 10, 2026 1:00PM (virtual)

  • Intro and overview of GenAI tools supported on the cluster
  • How to access them safely via API keys or Harvard subscription
  • Command-line setup of these tools on the cluster

Session 2: September 11, 2026 1:00PM (virtual)

  • Launching GenAI tools, safely on the cluster (covered in Session 1), in Jupyter, RStudio, and VSCode

Register for one or both sessions here

Weeks 3 & 4: Data Analysis with Agentic Tools (In-person)

Use the tools from the previous sections to practice data analysis on real datasets! We will analyze different datasets in different tracks of the workshop, each of which is broken into two sessions. The skills demonstrated will be the same regardless of which dataset track you choose, so pick a dataset track that interests you!

Track 1: 🦠🧬E. coli Long Term Evolution Experiment

Session 1 Tuesday September 15 9:00AM - 12:00PM, Northwest Building room 453

Session 2 Tuesday September 22 9:00AM - 12:00PM, Northwest Building room 453

Explore a real published dataset of RNA-seq and Ribo-seq data from a long term E. coli evolution experiment. You’ll be working with cleaned and processed read count and gene data in csv format only, no bioinformatics tools needed! Central question of the dataset: How does gene expression change over the course of 50,000 generations across 11 identical cell lines? [Data from Favate et al. eLife 2022 ]

Track 2: 🐀⚡ Rat Boxes in Cambridge

Session 1 Friday Sept 18 9:00AM - 12:00PM, Northwest Building room 425

Session 2 Friday Sept 25 9:00AM - 12:00PM, Northwest Building room 425

Compare the success of Cambridge’s program to zap rats with Smart Rat Boxes with 311 calls about rat sightings. You’ll be working with a list of Smart Rat Box deployments & 311 calls with addresses involving rat sightings over time. Central question of the dataset: Have smart rat boxes been effective in Cambridge for fighting the rat problem? [Data from Cambridge Open Data ]

Register for Data Science with Agentic Tools Here

Introduction to Python

Tuesdays and Thursdays, September 29 - October 15 (6 sessions), 2026, 9:00AM-12:00PM (In person)

Northwest Building room 453

This workshop will teach the basics of programming in the context of Python. No prior knowledge of Python or programming is required, but the pace will be fast. The workshop meets for six 3 hour sessions. See below for info on the past sessions.

Registration link coming soon

Comparative Genomics User Group

Check back soon for more info on our next meeting!

This group brings researchers across Harvard together to discuss and learn more about modern comparative genomics. It is for people who are using genomic data from multiple species to make inferences about evolutionary processes, with tools/approaches like whole genome alignment, orthology inference, phylogenetics, and molecular evolutionary analysis. One major goal of this group is to discuss common pain points and analysis challenges that come up repeatedly in this kind of work, and move towards developing broadly useful solutions (potentially via a Hackathon to build more robust comparative genomics pipelines).

To be added to the Comparative Genomics User Group mailing list, fill out the following:

* indicates required

Check back soon as we update our schedule for Summer and Fall 2026!

To view our most up to date workshop materials, check the Latest Workshop Content section below.

Recurring events

Office hours

We hold office hours every week on Wednesdays from 1:30 to 4:00pm in Northwest Building B227.45. If you can't make it in person, you can always contact us or ask your question on our Slack channel!

🍕 Programming and Pizza 🍕

We host programming and pizza events the second Wednesday of every month. Join us in our office in Northwest Building room B227.45 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm for a casual evening of coding, pizza, and conversation. Bring your laptop and any project you are working on, or just come to hang out and learn from others!

These will return in the Fall of 2026!

Calendar

This calendar will show all our upcoming office hours as well as any workshops or events we have scheduled.

Latest Workshop Content

This section contains the most up-to-date content for our workshops! The date we last updated and ran the workshop is noted.

Genomics on the Command Line: Developing Your Bioinformatics Intuition (Spring 2026)

Note that this workshop was previously called Biotips

Genomics on the Command Line is a four-part beginner workshop designed to help researchers build confidence in taking a practical “first pass” look at genomics data on the command line. The goal is not to teach in-depth scripting in Bash, Python, or LLM-based workflows, but to help participants develop a hands-on feel for common bioinformatics file formats, the basic tools available for inspecting them, and the kinds of questions they can answer quickly when something looks off.

Genomics on the Command Line Landing Page

Introduction to R (Fall 2025)

This workshop aims to introduce first-time users to the R programming language and the RStudio development environment. This 4 session workshop will provide a basic introduction to coding in R and then shift to data manipulation using the tidyverse , a set of R libraries designed to handle data tables in a consistent and easy way. Then, we'll learn how to generate some basic plots to explore our data using ggplot . You do not need any prior programming experience to take this workshop. But also note that this workshop is not a comprehensive programming class nor a comprehensive statistics class. The main goal of this workshop is to get you familiar with reading your data into R and performing basic operations and generating figures.

This course assumes no coding background and is suitable for beginners.

Intro to R Landing Page

Introduction to Snakemake (Fall 2025)

This two part intermediate level workshop introduces students to Snakemake , a workflow management system that allows you to create reproducible and scalable data analysis pipelines. In the first session we cover understanding the basics of running a Snakemake workflow. In the second session, we build on the first session and learn how to write a Snakemake workflow from scratch.

Snakemake Workshop Landing Page

Introduction to Nextflow (Fall 2025)

This 2 part intermediate level workshop introduces students to Nextflow , a workflow management system that allows you to create reproducible and scalable data analysis pipelines. In the first session we cover understanding the basics of running a Nextflow workflow. In the second session, we build on the first session and learn how to write a Nextflow workflow from scratch.

Nextflow Workshop Landing Page

Introduction to Python Intensive (Fall 2025)

This is a six day workshop that will introduce students to Python as a data science language. We teach the basics of programming and logic in the context of Python and go on to show the tools that use Python for modern data analysis. This assumes no prior knowledge of Python, but will move at a quick pace to cover all the content. The workshop meets for 3 hours for 4 sessions.

Python Intensive Landing Page

Healthy Habits for Data Science (Spring 2024)

This workshop aims to teach students how to be more effective at working on their projects using reproducible habits. We learn how to organize projects on the local machine as well as the Cannon cluster, how to manage software environments, how to use git and GitHub to track code changes, and how to write and scale scripts on an HPC.

Healthy Habits Landing Page

Short Trainings

We piloted a series of short one hour short trainings in the Fall of 2024. These sessions are designed to be quick introductions to topics that we think are useful for researchers. Sessions with content are listed below. See our previous events page to view topics that were live demonstrations with no attached content (look for the short trainings icon: ). If you are interested in any of these topics, please let us know and we can schedule another workshop or just talk about it with you!

Command line 101

Introductions to working on computers through text interfaces, starting with file system basics (part 1) and moving to topics such as remote computing, customizing your shell environment (parts 2 and 3), git from the command line (part 4), and tips for the submitting jobs on the SLURM cluster (part 5).

  • Part 1: What's the deal with directories? Intro to file systems

    February 5, 2026, 11:00AM-12:00PM (Virtual)

    Download slides

  • Part 2: Tips & tricks for aspiring power users

    February 12, 2026, 11:00AM-12:00PM (Virtual)

    Download slides

  • Part 3: Integrating your local and cluster compute environments

    February 19, 2026, 11:00AM-12:00PM (Virtual)

    Download slides

  • Part 4: Git/GitHub on the cluster and on your computer

    Thursday February 26, 2026, 11AM - 12PM

    Download slides

  • Part 5: Command Line 101: SLURM and job management tips

    Friday March 6, 2026, 11AM - 12PM

    Download slides

Introduction to single-cell RNA-seq analysis

Part 1 introduces students to the basics of single-cell RNA-seq analysis, including pre-processing and cleanup of data for downstream analyses.

Part 2 covers cluster marker gene discover, cell type annotation, and for multi-sample, multi-condition experiments, assessing and correcting batch effects, and differential expression analysis across experimental conditions. Note that to run the downloadable markdown below will require generating count matrices for the samples used in the training using cellranger count. Until we create an option for delivering the count matrices, please contact the Informatics Group for more information.

All others

Event and Workshop Archive

To view a list of previous events and workshops, click the button below.

Previous Events & Workshops