First Steps with UNIX in Life Sciences

Overview

With a constant evolution of technologies, life scientists (such as laboratory biologists) are faced with an increasing need for bioinformatics skills to deal with high-throughput data storage, retrieval and analysis.

Although several resources developed for such tasks have a web interface (most of the time, the first choice of biologists), many operations can be more efficiently handled with command-line programs and utilities.

Audience

This course is addressed to beginners wanting to become familiar with the UNIX environment and master the most common commands, which could be useful to run software dedicated to high-throughput data management.

Learning objectives

At the end of the course you should:

• be able to execute most basic UNIX commands
• be able to build complex and combined commands using various parameters
• be sufficiently skilled for further courses requiring basics of UNIX, like HPC or NGS courses

Prerequisites

Knowledge / competencies

As it is a course for beginners, no background in UNIX or any programming language is required.

Technical

A laptop with a command line terminal installed. The alternative for Windows users is to download a virtual machine image and thus at least 10 Go free on hard disk and 4 Go of RAM are required.

Application

Registration fees are 100 CHF for academics and 500 CHF for for-profit companies.

Deadline for registration and free-of-charge cancellation is set to 25/08/2025. Cancellation after this date will not be reimbursed. Please note that participation to SIB courses is subject to our general conditions.

You will be informed by email of your registration confirmation.

Venue and time

The course will take place at the University of Bern. It will start at 9:00 CET and end around 17:00 CET. The participants will get detailed information before the course.

Additional information

Coordination: Grégoire Rossier - SIB Training Group

We will recommend 0.25 ECTS credits for this course (given a passed exam at the end of the course).

You are welcome to register to the SIB courses mailing list to be informed of all future courses and workshops, as well as all important deadlines using the form here.

SIB abides by the ELIXIR Code of Conduct. Participants of SIB courses are also required to abide by the same code.

For more information, please contact training@sib.swiss.