Women in Science and Engineering convened at Software Carpentry Workshop

“Your primary collaborator is yourself six months from now, and your past self doesn't answer email,” Meg Duffy, EEB associate professor, identified this as a key take-home message of the workshop run by Software Carpentry that she helped organize. “Make sure you do your analyses in a way that you can reproduce six months from now!”

Four instructors taught the workshop, Christie Bahlai, postdoctoral research fellow, Michigan State University; Dana Bauer, Rackspace; Sarah Supp, an NSF postdoctoral fellow, University of Wisconsin; and Kara Woo, information manager, Washington State University. Nearly 60 people attended including graduate students, postdocs, technicians, and faculty.

The attendees were in two rooms: one for novices, the other for people with at least some programming experience. Topics covered included data management, programming in R, and version control.

“There was a really great atmosphere for the workshop, which brought together women from many different departments on campus,” Duffy said. “At the end of the workshop, people were immediately asking when the next one would be, which was a great sign!”

The event was generously supported by the Rackham Graduate School, ADVANCE program, and the University of Michigan Medical School. Pat Schloss, Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Duffy organized the workshop that was held in January 2015.