Code Lab: Introduction to Mathematica #1

A few weeks ago we had an great presentation by Ben Kline from Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL). He walked us through the ECL workflow for performing scientific research using Mathematica and their integrated ECL library. This workflow is poised to improve the research and discovery process for academia, institutions, citizen-scientists, and industry by automating the mundane tasks performed daily in most laboratory environments. Here at DBL we see the adoption of ECL and similar systems as an essential part of how research will be conducted in the life sciences.

Check out their process here: http://emeraldcloudlab.com/

To followup on the computational biology and automated wet-lab interests by DBL members we have decided to dedicate the month of April to introducing Mathematica and Python as part of our newly formed Code Lab.

This meetup will focus on working with Mathematica, the documentation system, and the basics of manipulating lists and tables of data and visualizing results in interesting ways. Just as we have been developing our biological vocabulary through BioSchool on Mondays, we will be building our programming skill set and vocabulary to prepare for working with many types of biological data sets and automated protocols.

Please bring a laptop with Mathematica 10 installed so we can jump right into experimenting. Mathematica offers a 15 day free trial and affordable options thereafter for academic and individual licenses. We have a limited number of laptops available in the event someone doesn’t have a machine.

IMPORTANT: To make the best use of the trial period, do NOT sign up and register Mathematica until the day of this first workshop. We are investigating licensing options to make further workshops possible.

http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/