PhD course: Advanced Scientific Programming with Python (3 hp)

This course is targeted towards PhD students from all disciplines who regularly use programming in their research. Our plan is to introduce commonly used software development tools and help you become better programmers. This course is going to be very practical with many hands-on examples, because in the end programming is mostly about practicing!

Registering for the course

Please apply for the course here.

How to be prepared for the course

This course will not cover the very basics of Python programming. However, we have compiled a list of resources that might help you get started: Preparation material.
To follow the content of this course, you should be familiar with the concepts covered by the Official Python Tutorial.

Bring your own laptop

This course requires you to bring your own laptop, and you will need a couple of things installed and running before you come to the first lecture. You can find installation instructions on the next section.
If, for some reason, you are not able to bring a laptop, please contact us ahead of time so that we can figure out a solution for you.

Install Python

Please have a look at our installation guide.

Questions

If you have any questions about the course, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Filipe Maia (filipe.maia@icm.uu.se)

Course schedule
DayTimeTopicRoom
Monday, 2026-03-1609:15-12:00Basics: An introduction to the UNIX shell, interactive Python and git repositoriesBMC A5:001
Monday, 2026-03-1613:15-16:00Hands-on exercisesBMC A5:001
Tuesday, 2026-03-1709:15-12:00Best practices I:Organizing, debugging and profiling of codeBMC A5:001
Tuesday, 2026-03-1713:15-16:00Hands-on exercisesBMC A5:001
Wednesday, 2026-03-1809:15-12:00High performance computing:Speed optimization using Numpy, Cython, MPI and GPU accelerationBMC A5:001
Wednesday, 2026-03-1813:15-16:00Hands-on exercisesBMC A5:001
Thursday, 2026-03-1909:15-12:00Best practices II:Testing, documenting and packaging of codeBMC A5:001
Thursday, 2026-03-1913:15-16:00Hands-on exercises and coding projectBMC A5:001
Friday, 2026-03-2009:15-12:00Data containers:Efficient memory storage using HDF5, Pytables and PandasBMC A5:001
Friday, 2026-03-2013:15-16:00Hands-on exercises and coding projectBMC A5:001