The Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia

Introductory programming for biologists
July 28 - August 1, 2008

This one-week, intensive course sponsored by the Institute of Bioinformatics will introduce students with a biological background to programming in the C language. The course is intended for early graduate students with no previous programming experience or those with a limited experience in another programming language. The course will cover the basic features of C including constants, variables, operators, arrays, loops, and overall program structure. Students will learn to write simple programs to manipulate data and perform simple computations. This course will also provide a starting point for learning more advanced programming techniques and additional features of the C language.

The course will be offered in the week of July 28 - August 1, 2008. We will meet in two sessions every day at 10:30-12:00 and 2:00-3:30 in the computer lab in the Life Sciences Building (C128), which is equipped with MacIntosh workstations running under the OS X operating system. The course participants should reserve additional time to work on their assignments. There are no formal prerequisites for this course but a previous experience with UNIX shell commands and/or some bioinformatics tools and databases is desirable. The text "The C Programming Language" by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie will be used in the class. The instructor is Jan Mrazek.

A registration site has been set up at http://www.bioinformatics.uga.edu/registration2008.php. Because of the limited number of seats and computers in the lecture room, we will be able to register only 20 students. Graduate students in the Bioinformatics program registered before May 18th will be guaranteed a place in the class. The rule 'first in - first served' will apply to the remaining slots. The registration will be open until all slots are filled.