[Bio-matrix] Java for Biologists, March 2009

[Heather Vincent]

Java is one of a number of languages now used in computational biology. 
  In March 2009 we will be running online courses in Java at two 
different levels, Introductory and Intermediate.  The introductory 
course is specifically designed for biologists with no previous 
experience in programming.

At The University of Manchester, UK, we have 10 years experience in 
running online programming courses for biologists.  We use a Virtual 
Learning Environment, which allows us to extend the classroom into the 
web.  We use a range of tools to support our online teaching activities.

Each course, which is paced to suit those in full-time employment, runs 
over 16 teaching weeks.

Introduction to software development in Java covers:

Object-oriented basics
Imperative programming
Classes, responsibilities and collaborations
Inheritance
Exception handling
Collections and algorithms
Building simple GUIs
Stream and file I/O


Intermediate software development using Java covers:

A review the main language features omitted from the introductory course
Algorithms and data structures
Concurrency
Storing and manipulating external data
Basics of OO design
Networking and client-server systems
Relational databases
Other OO languages

You will find information on all our courses, including fees and a link 
to the online application form, here : 
http://octette.cs.man.ac.uk/bioinformatics/index.html  If you have any 
questions, or need advice on the module options, please contact 
Heather.Vincent from manchester.ac.uk