PhD Coding Clinic

Transform Your PhD Research with Automation: A Hands-On Course for Real Results

As a PhD candidate, you're already deep into managing and analyzing data, and you know how crucial it is to streamline these processes. That's where our course comes in. We're focused on showing you exactly which parts of your data pipeline can benefit most from automation. It's all about making your research more efficient and enhancing your skills in coding and project management. Using the latest easy-to-use programming tools, we'll help you create a custom plan for automating your data processes, tailored to your specific PhD project. Whether you're still getting comfortable with coding or looking to apply your skills more effectively, our course is designed to give you a comprehensive view of your project, helping you identify and automate bottlenecks. Plus, if your own project isn't ready for automation, we've got case studies for you to work on. Our teaching approach? Interactive and practical. Think of it as a coding clinic: there are walk-in hours for one-on-one help and monthly group sessions for sharing progress and brainstorming. Let's automate your research together.

Learning Aims

• The participant should be able to analyze given project for potential bottlenecks in the data acquisition/analysis/presentation that can be solved with automation.
• The participant should be able to chart an automation plan for a given project including the time investment / benefit analysis.
• The participant should be able to introduce complex automated procedures to the data pipeline (data generation/ acquisition, data analysis, data representation) and be able to justify using / not using automation in the rest of the cases.

Teaching Activities

• Presentation of successful data pipeline automation cases by teachers. (Contributes to Learning Aims 1, 2, and 3)
• Guidance through the planning / automation process in 1-to-1 setting. (Contributes to Learning Aims 1 and 2)
• One-to-one meeting with the teacher to assess the plan. (Contributes to Learning Aims 2 and 3)
• Moderate student presentations of their plans to peers. (Contributes to Learning Aims 2 and 3)
• Coding clinic (walk-in hours) for counselling on the automation tools and strategies to use. (Contributes to Learning Aims 1, 2, and 3)
• Short lectures about automation cases to show what is available. (Contributes to Learning Aims 1, 2, and 3)

Assessment Methods:

Reflection on your own project and presentation of these reflections to peers in the form of a Power Point presentation

In the presentation, the student should:

• Summarize their current data pipeline. (Learning Aims 1, 2)
• Identify tractable bottlenecks. (Learning Aim 1)
• Develop a short term automation plan (within the duration of the course). (Learning Aims 1, 2)
• Develop a long-term plan. (Learning Aims 1, 2, 3)

Submit a data pipeline automation plan for own/given project

In the report, the students should:

• Identify and justify which automation tools are appropriate for their pipeline's bottlenecks. (Learning Aims 1, 2, 3)
• Identify which bottlenecks are reasonable to solve within the scope of their project. (Learning Aims 1, 2)
• Identify and justify which bottlenecks are reasonable to solve within the scope of the class. (Learning Aims 1, 2)
• Propose and present a realistic, step-by-step plan to implement their automation. The plan has to contain an implementation strategy: which parts of the pipeline will be automated, with specification of tools and a vision how the automated version will work. (Learning Aims 1, 2, 3)

Final project presentation

• The final project presentation should contain a case study of the automation of the own project: comparison of the pipeline before and after automation, presentation of the technologies used for automation and reflection on the time/skill investment, analysis of the efficiency gain, perspective on the further development. (Learning Aims 1, 2, 3)

The course logistics

The course will be carried out over 6 months with biweekly walk in hours for coding clinic and monthly full-class meetings. The full-class meetings will include: lectures, presentations of the projects and reporting on progress to peers. The course will be worth 5 EC. The students can come in with their own data pipeline which they would like to build/improve under our counseling. Alternatively, we will offer an exciting practical case study for them to work on instead .

SCHEDULE 2024

 Meetings are all Fridays, starting from 14:00 and till 16:00 max.