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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

Workshops

Generative AI and Data Analysis

November 12 & 19, 2026, 9:30-11:30am (virtual)

Do you want to learn how to responsibly use agentic generative AI tools like Claude to help analyze your data, but are afraid of letting it loose on your own research data? Have you only used chat windows or code completion and are curious what the big deal with “agentic” generative AI is?

In this two part workshop, we'll do hands on activities centered around end-to-end data analysis of fun and small datasets with generative AI assistance. Portions of this workshop will use one of two real datasets. You can pick from either one, but everybody is going to the same zoom meeting: 🦠🧬E. coli Long Term Evolution Experiment [Data from Favate et al. eLife 2022 ] or 🐀⚡ Rat Boxes in Cambridge [Data from Cambridge Open Data ].

Session 1 (November 12): For the first session, we’ll start with a short demo highlighting the choices AI makes for you. Then for the first breakout session, everyone will run the same prompt on one of the datasets to explore the variability of LLM responses. Next, you’ll work in small groups on the same prompt/question and compare notes. The goal of this day is to explore and develop a feel for how to use genAI.

Session 2 (November 19): We will focus on how to use generative AI to create reproducible and rigorous analysis. We'll learn about agent skills, guardrails, and project organization for AI-assisted data analysis. We’ll walk through best practices and pitfalls while we reorganize the previous session's project, then test the new setup in small groups. Finally, we’ll do a show and tell and learn from each other.

For more information and registration, click the button below:

Register Here

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!

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

🍕 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!

Fall 2026 Programming & Pizza dates:

September 9, Northwest Building room B227.45, 4:00-6:00PM

October 14, Northwest Building room B227.45, 4:00-6:00PM

November 11, Northwest Building room B227.45, 4:00-6:00PM

December 9, Northwest Building room B227.45, 4:00-6:00PM

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.

Data Analysis Using GenAI Tools (Fall 2026)

Pre-requisite: Claude code subscription or equivalent

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? This four week series walks you through how to perform a data analysis with AI tools, starting from technical setup and finishing with analyses of real data.

Week 1 - Setting up Claude (Virtual)

Week 2 - Launching GenAI Tools on FASRC Clusters (Virtual w/ FASRC ): See FASRC training materials , under "Advanced trainings > Fall 2026" for session slides and videos.

Weeks 3 and 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! We analyzed two datasets in this portion of the workshop. See the github repos below for more info.

🦠🧬E. coli Long Term Evolution Experiment 🐀⚡ Rat Boxes in Cambridge

Introduction to Programming and Data Science with Python (Fall 2026)

Note that this workshop was previously called Python Intensive

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.

Introduction to Python

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

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