Logistics

The Fourth Cohort of the ESDS in the Cloud course is now slated to begin on January 27, 2025 and run through April 2025. A full class schedule can be found below. The course supports multiple participation options including in-person attendance, remote synchronous participation via Zoom, and asynchronous learning through recorded sessions and course materials. The course will be a significant time commitment; the team projects can be designed to accommodate and accelerate existing research projects.

Schedule

Pre-Course Preparation

During January 2025, we will be preparing you for this course. This involves discussions with each participant, formation and initial meetings with the course organizers, and technical configuration to support access to course resources.

Email to confirmed participants was sent at the beginning of January. If you are interested in taking this course, but have not yet contacted the course organizers, please do so by reaching out to Denis Willett at dwillett@cicsnc.org or Garrett Graham at ggraham@cicsnc.org to express interest, ask any questions, and enroll.

The course will run from 9 AM - 3 PM ET on the days listed, with 3 - 4 PM ET occasionally reserved for team project collabortation.

Module 1 | Scientific Programming

• January 27, 2025 - January 31, 2025

Module 2 | Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)

• February 10, 2025 - February 14, 2025

Module 3 | Data Product Development

• March 3, 2025 - March 7, 2025

Module 4 | Production Data Science

• March 24, 2025 - March 28, 2025

Module 5 | Product Delivery

• April 14, 2025 - April 18, 2025

Course Commitment

Because each module builds on itself, we expect participants to be able to fully participate in all modules. We recognize that this is a substantial time commitment. In our experience, the compressed and intensive nature of this course is the most efficient and effective way to quickly build data science skills.

In-Person

Classes will be held in Room 400 of the Federal Building. Half of this room will be setup in a lecture-style classroom and the other half arranged to support practical work in teams. Ample power strips will be provided for charging and the NCICS WiFi network will be available for connecting to cloud resources.

Please make sure you bring the following materials to class each day:

Materials:

• Laptop with working WiFi
• Charger
• Any preferred notetaking equipment
• Water

Participation

This course is designed to be primarily in-person, although we support hybrid and remote synchronous and asynchronous access. A critical component of this course is team interactions. We highly encourage in-person participation throughout the course, especially for team activities, but recognize that other commitments may sometimes interfere. All sessions will be hosted via Zoom and available for hybrid synchronous participation. These Zoom sessions will be recorded and the recordings made available as soon as is possible. Zoom meeting information can be accessed through the syllabus on this site.

Prerequisites

To be successful in this course, you must have an advanced scientific and technical background with experience personally conducting research. Our assumption is that you will come into this course with graduate level expertise in your specific domain and the ability to ask and answer domain relevant research questions.

In addition, you should be familiar with:

• Scientific programming in at least one of the following languages: Python, R, MatLab, SAS, Fortran, or C

• Using the Terminal

• Linux or MacOS environments

• The Scientific Method

• Scientific publishing