Here are the amazing speakers from 2023. Check back in May for 2024's line up.
Jupyter Notebooks are a powerful interactive tool that can help you develop and practice your coding skills (especially in Python and Markdown), build reproducible and shareable outputs and easily present the results of your work. This session will discuss some of the pros and cons of using Jupyter Notebooks and give you a chance to follow along and make your first steps in using the tool yourself.
Konstantina Vasileva Research Capability Lead, Victoria University of Wellington
Konstantina worked in media analytics and consumer intelligence for about a decade before coming to Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington as a graduate researcher. She now steers support for researcher development needs and collaboration efforts in the University's Research Capability team.
A hands-on, gentle introduction to using the Julia programming language and the MLJ library for machine learning. The basic workflow for training a supervised learning model will be explained, and users will build a basic decision tree model to predict survival probabilities in a hypothetical repeat of the historic Titanic disaster. MLJ (https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/MLJ.jl/dev/) is a powerful toolbox for quickly selecting, optimizing and comparing diverse machine learning models (as opposed to to frameworks focused on, say, deep learning). Advanced features include the ability to create model pipelines and to combine multiple model predictions in flexible ways.This is a tutorial on how to use the MLJ software, and not a course on machine learning itself.
Open drop-in session to help with troubleshooting, getting help with installing session requirements, and any ResBaz questions. No registration required, just join via Zoom when the session starts.
Learn how to develop reproducible and sharable workflows using Quarto and Git. We will take you through how to host collaborative research projects as a formatted (and cool looking) HTML on GitHub. With some easy-to-learn version control and markdown syntax, research outputs can be shared as a live link that is consitent with your latest analyses. One benefit of Quarto is flexibility, accepting multiple programming languages (R, Python, Julia...) and output formats (docx, pdf, html...).
This workshop will introduce participants to the basics of creating a simple web-based map using the open-source JavaScript library, Leaflet. Participants will learn how to create an interactive map with custom markers, popups, and interactive layers. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the skills to create and publish their own simple web-based maps. Some experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript would be useful, but is not necessary.
Noel Zeng eResearch Solutions Specialist, University of Auckland
Noel Zeng is an eResearch Solutions Specialist at the Centre for eResearch, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. He received a BSc in Computer Science in 2012. While his main role is in software development, he is passionate about sharing skills and tips for using tools like Python, JavaScript and Git to accelerate your research. He is a certified [Carpentries](https://carpentries.org/) instructor, and hosts [HackyHour](https://uoa-eresearch.github.io/HackyHour/) at University of Auckland, a shared space where students and researchers can get help for and help others with questions around coding and data.
An overview of research data management requirements, practices, tools and support across the research data lifecycle. Research data or artefatcs are defined as items created, collected or observed in the course of producing original research, regardless of format. This introductory workshop is aimed at researchers, particularly those embarking on their research career or starting a new research project. Attendees will hear about policy, legal and ethical requirements, the FAIR, CARE and Maori Data Sovereignty principles, and develop strategies for data management planning, capturing, organising, sharing, and reusing research data.
Led by the experts from Dropbox, this seminar is designed to help you make use of key features of this collaborative platform. Hosts will provide practical insights into how to effectively utilise Dropbox to improve collaboration, including how to manage files, share documents, and create teams, especially for those with institutional accounts (e.g. University of Auckland, University of Otago). Attendees will also learn about the latest features, including Transfer, Paper, Backup and how to use them to streamline workflows.
Laura Armstrong Senior eResearch Engagement Specialist, University of Auckland
Laura Armstrong is the eResearch Engagement Lead for Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland. She collaborates to engage with the research community to raise awareness and use of modern technologies and tools to advance research. Areas of focus include enabling researchers to manage research data following best practices, including FAIR, CARE and Māori Data Sovereignty data principles, and providing digital research skills and community building.
Need more computer power to do your analysis? Is your laptop/desktop struggling to run your analysis? Come along to hear about virtual machines and High Performance Computing options available to University of Auckland staff and doctoral students.
Martin Feller eResearch Platform & Services Lead, University of Auckland
Martin leads the Platform & Services team in the Centre for eResearch.
The Unix shell is a powerful command-line interface and scripting language which can automate repetitive tasks. The Unix philosophy is that each tool (command) should perform just one task, and perform it well.\nLearning the command-line is learning how to exploit these tools and compose them to perform tasks that you can find no satisfactory single tool to perform. Along the way, you will learn how to choose appropriate commands for your tasks and develop an understanding of how the command line can help you to save time.\nBash is the default shell on most modern implementations of Unix and in most packages that provide Unix-like tools for Windows.This session will use the command-line bash shell to introduce you to the basics, as far as time permits, of how to navigate the file-system; read, write, and modify files; parse data from and to files; create custom re-usable commands in the form of aliases, shell functions and shell scripts; and automate repetitive tasks.
A practical introduction to some powerful command line utilities for efficient searching, parsing and manipulating of files and text. We will cover some of the workhorse commands in the UNIX toolbox, such as find, grep, awk, and sed. These are simple to use for simple applications, but provide powerful ways to perform complex actions.\nWith grep, we introduce regular expressions which are a widely-used language for specifying patterns in text.\nThis workshop follows on from \"Introduction to the command line\" session, so it is assumed you will have either participated in this session or already have an understanding of the concepts covered in it.
Anita Kean eResearch Solutions Analyst, University of Auckland
Anita is a Centre for eResearch Platform & Services Team Engineer.
Finding it challenging to collaborate with other researchers? Do you want to make your research as accessible and reproducible as possible? Google Colab is a hosted Jupyter notebook service that allows anybody to write and execute python code through the browser, while providing access free of charge to computing resources including GPUs. With a robust free tier, no installation or prerequisites, and a tonne of features, Google Colab can undoubtedly help you. This one-hour introductory workshop will demonstrate the most important features of Google Colab. Some UoA-specific topics will also be covered, such as how to mount your Google Drive or Dropbox so you can utilise your datasets and have your results saved automatically. This workshop's final section will showcase examples of how Google Colab is being used for research and education.
Mike Laverick Senior eResearch Solutions Specialist, University of Auckland
Mike is a Senior eResearch Solutions Specialist at the Centre for eResearch at the University of Auckland. Formerly an atomic astrophysicist, Mike now uses his experience in research and in Python to help develop instrument data infrastructure and visualisation tools for the university.
New to the Python programming language and interested in how it can help your research? Then this intro session is for you! No prior knowledge of Python required, no hands-on coding involved, just sit back with your favourite beverage and find out about the powerful world of Python. The session is split into 2 parts. Part 1 - A holistic overview of Python. Key concepts in Python, how Python is used around the world, and how Python can help you organise, analyse, and visualise your research data. Part 2 - Getting started with Python for research. A live demonstration of how to start using Python to investigate research data, including - how to load in a spreadsheet of data, basic manipulation and processing of the data, how to quickly visualise the data to reveal insights into the dataset, and a bunch of useful links to help you launch your journey into using Python.
Embark on a practical and engaging journey into the world of Python with our hands-on, 2-hour workshop, designed to demystify one of the most popular and versatile programming languages extensively used in a multitude of research disciplines. Whether you're a complete beginner or merely aiming to refresh your understanding of Python basics, we will have an enriching session that navigates the language's fundamental elements. Our aim is to equip you with a comprehensive understanding of Python's essential syntax, control flow, and data structures, providing a solid foundation for you to explore and exploit the language's immense potential further. This workshop will give you the tools and confidence necessary to start applying Python to your respective research field.
This session expands upon "LaTeX 101" by introducing more features such as mathematical formulas, tables, figures, and bibliographies. These are the features which make LaTeX a popular, time-saving option for producing sophisticated scientific documents, and for having complete control over the formatting of each element. We will also touch on how to use LaTeX to create slides for presentations. This session is aimed at participants who want to improve their document formatting skills, particularly for academic and technical writing.
Chris Seal Senior eResearch Solutions Specialist, University of Auckland
Chris is a Senior Solutions Specialist at the University of Auckland's Centre for eResearch, where he leads the development of the University's Instrument Data Service (IDS), which is built using Python. He has an interest in furthering the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs) as a means of connecting different systems together. Because of this interest, he is a member of the I4IOz, an Australasian community of practice developing best-practice guidance for using PIDs for instruments and is on the international advisory board for the newly developed research activity identifier (RAiD).
Economic, societal and environmental impact, or the 'non-academic' impact of research, is becoming an increasingly important part of the research ecosystem. It is standard practice for researchers to be asked by funders to describe the benefits of their research and how they might enable that benefit to be achieved. This session offers a high-level step-by-step guide on how to incorporate impact into your research planning.
Faith Welch Research Impact Manager, Office of Research Strategy and Integrity
This workshop will introduce participants to the basics of creating a simple web-based map using the open-source JavaScript library, Leaflet. Participants will learn how to create an interactive map with custom markers, popups, and interactive layers. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the skills to create and publish their own simple web-based maps. Some experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript would be useful, but is not necessary.
Nick Young eResearch Senior Solutions Specialist, Centre for eResearch
Nick Young works at the Centre for eResearch as a Research Software Engineer. His primary focus is on research data visualisation, helping researchers across the University visualise their research data with a variety of programming languages.
Jens Brinkmann Senior eResearch Engagement Specialist, University of Auckland
Jens is passionate about learning how things work and teaching. After working as a consultant in engineering roles in several countries, he came to the University of Auckland for a PhD. After completing his PhD, he went to teach for a year at Unitec. He recently joined the Centre for eResearch, where he aims to provide the same high level of support to researchers and staff members to what he received from CER during his own PhD.
Reviewing the literature is an important part of the research process. Organising relevant papers and findings are more than just data entry or bibliographic tasks, you also need to be able to analyse and integrate this material with the qualitative data you are gathering. This one-hour demonstration will provide an overview of NVivo's functionality with regard to literature reviews. Importing and coding literature, running queries on published material, and working with bibliographic data in conjunction with your NVivo project will all be covered.
There's a lot more to NVivo than initially meets the eye! In this webinar we'll be showcasing our favourite features of NVivo including matrix coding queries, explore and comparison diagrams, and mind-maps. This session is perfect for researchers who are new to NVivo, as well as those who are familiar with the basics and curious to know what else is possible.
Lyn Lavery Academic Consultant, Academic Consulting
Lyn is the director and founder of Academic Consulting where she utilises her extensive experience in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to assist a diverse range of researchers, including senior academics in leading tertiary institutions, PhD students, and research teams within central government.
Learn how to create an attractive, functional website to showcase your research career and outputs using GitHub and wowchemy. Some familiarity with git, HTML and CSS will be beneficial, but not necessary.
Interested in learning how to use a suite of open-source tools to create interactive narratives and visualisations for your research? This session provides an overview of a range of free, easy-to-use tools from KnightLab useful for time or location-based narratives. Learn the basics and see how easy and fun it is to create a compelling StoryMap.
Matt Plummer Senior Research Partner, Victoria University of Wellington
Matt's background spans the arts and technology. He works with researchers from different disciplines to facilitate collaborative projects, especially those which utilise technology in innovative and transformative ways. He's assisted with the development of a range of open source projects, augmented reality applications and research tools.
You know how to crop an image, but what if you need to crop 65000 images in one go? This applied tutorial will introduce how the Python programming language can be used to create powerful, scalable and repeatable workflows, using image manipulation as an example. The session will include a live demo with commentary, project showcase and questions and answers. Having an entry level understanding of Python or a similar programming language will be helpful, but not essential.
Andre Geldenhuis Research Software engineer, Victoria University of Wellington
Andre is a research software engineer based in Victoria University of Wellington's Centre for Academic Development Andre works with academics and post-graduate students to deliver high-technology research and teaching outcomes and solutions.
A hands-on introduction to high performance computing (HPC) on a NeSI supercomputer. Members of the NeSI training team will guide attendees through HPC fundamentals including, software environment modules, scheduler use, profiling and scaling. We recommend you attend 'Introduction to the Command Line' or are already familiar with navigating a command line linux environment. Requirements - NeSI account, details provided after registration and closer to the event.
The computational requirements of high impact research seems to grow further beyond what individual groups and institutions can reasonably provide every year. New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) seeks to help meet these requirements for the New Zealand research community.\n\nIn this talk we will go over the core services relating to high performance computing (HPC) that NeSI is able to provide, the reason why HPC might be suitable for your work, and how your research team can gain access to these resources.
Callum Walley Application Support Analyst, National eScience Infrastructure
Engineering Applications Support at New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI), Software Carpentry Instructor.
Eirian Perkins Analyst Programmer, National eScience Infrastructure
Eirian Perkins is a software developer at the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, earned a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder and has well over a decade of professional experience. She is also a doctoral student in biological sciences at the University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau.
An overview of research data management requirements, practices, tools and support across the research data lifecycle. Research data or artefatcs are defined as items created, collected or observed in the course of producing original research, regardless of format. This introductory workshop is aimed at researchers, particularly those embarking on their research career or starting a new research project. Attendees will hear about policy, legal and ethical requirements, the FAIR, CARE and Maori Data Sovereignty principles, and develop strategies for data management planning, capturing, organising, sharing, and reusing research data.
Researchers spend a lot of time capturing, organising, and consulting sources, so it makes sense to use a good reference manager. Zotero is a free open-source reference manager built by researchers for researchers. It is simple to learn, yet powerful and feature-rich, and will save you countless hours when wrangling your sources. In this two hour workshop you'll learn how to use Zotero to capture, organise, and cite your references when you need them.
R is a free and widely used programming language for data analysis and statistics. This workshop aims to introduce you to the R programming language, and RStudio - free software used to work with R. We will cover the most important parts of using R including working with data and creating beautiful plots. There will be hands-on exercises for you to practice R coding and we will share tips-and-tricks to help you start your R journey with confidence!
Open drop-in session to help with troubleshooting, getting help with installing session requirements, and any ResBaz questions. No registration required, just join via Zoom when the session starts.
Tom Saunders eResearch Engagement Specialist, University of Auckland
Tom organises and delivers digital research skills workshops and has been involved with organising resbaz since 2022. He consults with researchers on the management of research data and tries to make sure they are getting the most out of the services offered by the Centre for eResearch.
Fiona Lamont Research Services Team Leader, University of Auckland
Fiona is a Research Services Team Lead within Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff, particularly those within the creative arts.
Ben Collings Doctoral Candidate, University of Auckland
Ben is undertaking doctoral research that considers the application of satellite data to assess coastline change in New Zealand.
Why are you here? What are you presenting? Who are you presenting to? No, this is not the abstract for “Existentialism with Nietzsche”, it's “Design 101: Presentations, Posters, and PowerPoints for Researchers”! Have you ever seen a research poster or a PowerPoint presentation that was truly terrible and thought, “Wow, I wonder how I could salvage that? I wonder how I can make research approachable through attractive design?” In this session, we will give you tips on what makes good visual design for research. We will walk you through the do's (and some don'ts) and what to consider when putting together a visual research presentation, whether a poster, a PowerPoint slideshow, or another type of medium.
Alissa Hackett Research Services Adviser, University of Auckland
Alissa completed her Chemical Sciences PhD at the University of Auckland before joining the Research Services team within Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff within the Faculty of Science.
Maxime Rio Data Scientist, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure
Maxime is a data scientist in the Computational Science Team, NeSI based in NIWA. Maxime holds a PhD in computer science and has been crunching data for almost a decade.
Learn how to develop reproducible and sharable workflows using Quarto and Git. We will take you through how to host collaborative research projects as a formatted (and cool looking) HTML on GitHub. With some easy-to-learn version control and markdown syntax, research outputs can be shared as a live link that is consitent with your latest analyses. One benefit of Quarto is flexibility, accepting multiple programming languages (R, Python, Julia...) and output formats (docx, pdf, html...).
This workshop aims to introduce Quarto, a powerful tool for efficient document creation. Quarto leverages the simplicity of Markdown and the flexibility of modern web technologies to streamline the process of generating dynamic and interactive documents. In this tutorial, we will explore the key features of Quarto, including its seamless integration with R and Python, support for data visualisations, and collaborative authoring capabilities. By the end, you will have a solid understanding of Quarto's capabilities and be equipped to create stunning, data-driven documents effortlessly. Join us on this tutorial journey and unlock the potential of Quarto for your document workflow.
Quinn Asena Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Quinn has recently submitted his doctoral thesis in macro-ecology. Before heading the United States to take up a research postdoc, Quinn has joined the Engagement team within the Centre for eResearch.
Dinindu Senanayake HPC applications support specialist, National eScience Infrastructure
Dinindu Senanayakeis a NeSI Applications Support Specialist, specifically in Genomics/Bioinformatics. He has approximately seven years of research experience in Cancer Genetics, Chemical Genetics and Systems Biology. Originally from Sri Lanka, he moved to New Zealand in 2006, arriving for studies and staying for nature.
What is Rust, and how might you use it for research? Tim McNamara, author of Rust in Action, will give a quick primer on the Rust programming language, and explain how it might be used to speed up, and scale up, your research. No prior experience with the language is necessary.
Tim McNamara Founder, Accelerant
New Zealand's first certified Software Carpentry instructor, Tim is a skilled and experienced data scientist who also has a background in the humanities. He is the author of Rust in Action, and makes use of this programming language to build everything from data processing pipelines to generative art.
Julia is a relatively new but exciting, multi-purpose programming language, with increasing adoption among scientific researchers. Interaction with Julia closely resembles that of scripting languages, such as R, MATLAB and python, and a growing number of Julia libraries provide similar functionality for scientific computation. However, extending modifying, or creating new software in these older languages is complicated as all performance critical code must be written in a second, low-level language, like C or FORTRAN, which are more technically demanding, and are slower to test, debug, etc. Julia's careful and elegant design solves this two language problem. In this presentation and Q&A session, find out if Julia is a good match for your research project.
A hands-on, gentle introduction to using the Julia programming language and the MLJ library for machine learning. The basic workflow for training a supervised learning model will be explained, and users will build a basic decision tree model to predict survival probabilities in a hypothetical repeat of the historic Titanic disaster. MLJ (https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/MLJ.jl/dev/) is a powerful toolbox for quickly selecting, optimizing and comparing diverse machine learning models (as opposed to to frameworks focused on, say, deep learning). Advanced features include the ability to create model pipelines and to combine multiple model predictions in flexible ways.This is a tutorial on how to use the MLJ software, and not a course on machine learning itself.
A two-hour introductory workshop for newcomers to Julia, targeted at users from some technical domain, such as science, economics or engineering. Users will learn how to interact with Julia's powerful command-line interface (REPL) as well as through Pluto notebooks. They will learn how to carry out basic mathematical and statistical operations; how to create custom workflows by learning about functions and basic iteration; and how to perform basic data manipulation and visualization.
Anthony Blaom Senior Research Fellow, University of Auckland
Dr. Blaom is a mathematician who has published in differential geometry, dynamical systems, fluid mechanics and machine learning. He also lectured in mathematics for many years. He is a co-creator and lead contributor for MLJ, an open-source machine learning platform launched by the Alan Turing Institute, London, in 2019.
Jonny Flutey Deputy Director, CAD, Victoria University of Wellington
Jonathan Flutey is the Deputy Director of Victoria University of Wellington's Centre for Academic Development. He has led digital development across the university including supporting e-initiatives into new areas of teaching and research.
The tidyverse has changed R programming for data scientists tremendously. Cleaning and analysing rectangular data, loops, and parallelization can now be performed through a number of convenient functions. This session offers some recipes and translations for existing R users who want to include more of the tidyverse in their everyday data analysis tasks.
Thomas Koentges Assistant Professor, You Say Data
Thomas's research interests reflect his passion for classical studies, digital humanities, computer science and data analysis. Recently returned to New Zealand from the University of Leipzig, Germany, by way of a fellowship at Havard, he is a driven researcher and teacher advancing and promoting data science and technologies for the research of historical languages as well as for the cultural heritage sector. He is the founder of You Say Data.
Billie Berry Learning Designer, Victoria University of Wellington
Billie has recently graduated with an MA looking at the philosophy of statistics. In her work at VUW's Centre for Academic Development, she helps academics use digital resources, tools and methods to support student engagement.
Reuben Ayeleke Clinical Research Data Manager, University of Auckland
I'm currently the Clinical Research Data Manager for the Liggins Institute. I trained and practiced as a medical practitioner in Nigeria. Besides my medical degree, I hold a master's degree (MSc) in Public Health and Health Services Research from the University of Aberdeen (UK) and a doctoral degree (PhD) in Health Sciences from the University of Auckland.
Visual abstracts are a 'movie poster' of a journal article displayed on social media that hooks a viewer's attention to read your article. Like a 3-minute thesis is a verbal elevator pitch, a visual abstract is a pictorial summary understood in a 30-second glance. Designed with icons and keywords, they are simpler than a graphical abstract and quicker to make. Visual abstracts are a powerful thinking tool for yourself and a valuable communication tool to engage others. The first half of the session is an interactive exploration of visual abstracts to inspire your imagination. The second half is a guided workshop where together we build your creative confidence by making a visual abstract.
Amanda Charlton Hon Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland
Amanda is an enthusiastic biomedical educator at the University of Auckland and an Anatomical Pathologist at Auckland Hospital. Amanda is known for her simple, visual approaches to science communication across disciplines.
OpenRefine is a powerful, free, open-source tool for working with messy data - cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data. This introductory, practical workshop will demonstrate how it can help you to - Understand the structure of a data set and resolve inconsistencies; Split data up into more granular parts; Match local data up to other data sets; Enhance a data set with data from other sources.
R is a free and widely used programming language for data analysis and statistics. This workshop aims to introduce you to the R programming language, and RStudio - free software used to work with R. We will cover the most important parts of using R including working with data and creating beautiful plots. There will be hands-on exercises for you to practice R coding and we will share tips-and-tricks to help you start your R journey with confidence!
Communicating data visually is an increasingly important skill that all researchers are expected to have. This session provides an introduction to basic principles of data visualisation including colour theory, chart types, and effective labelling. Understanding these concepts will enable you to create clear, informative, publication-quality graphs and plots. A variety of examples will be demonstrated based on The Grammar of Graphics in R. We will also cover best practices for formatting and styling graphs, as well as techniques for optimising graphs for different audiences and publications. By the end of the session, participants will understand how to effectively communicate their data and insights to a wide range of audiences.
This workshop aims to provide participants with insights and practical techniques for effectively collaborating on written documents and code using version control systems. Versioning is a critical aspect of successful collaboration, enabling seamless tracking of changes, streamlined teamwork, and improved project management. This webinar will explore the concepts, tools, and best practices that can empower individuals and teams to collaborate efficiently and maintain the integrity of their work.
Murray Cadzow Scientific Programmer, University of Otago
Murray is on the Scientific Programming team for Research Teaching and IT Support at the University of Otago. With a PhD in Biochemistry, he works alongside researchers with their computational workflows and organises and instructs Software and Data Carpentry workshops.
Confused about where you should publish your research? Want to make sure you're publishing in credible journals? Want to learn more about the publishing process? In this session we'll cover publishing strategies to maximise the impact of your research and provide an overview of the publishing and peer review process so you know what to expect.
Donna MacColl Research Services Team Lead, University of Auckland
Donna has a PhD in Genetics and is a senior member of the Research Service team in Te Tumu Herenga | Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland.
Berit Anderson Research Services Adviser, University of Auckland
Berit is a Research Services Advisor within Te Tumu Herenga | Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff within the Faculty of Science. She designs & leads workshops and offers consultations on search strategies, databases, and systematic reviews.
Confused about where you should publish your research? Want to make sure you're publishing in credible journals? Want to learn more about the publishing process? In this session we'll cover publishing strategies to maximise the impact of your research and provide an overview of the publishing and peer review process so you know what to expect.
Erin Wood Research Services Adviser, University of Auckland
Erin is a Research Services Advisor within Te Tumu Herenga | Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff, particularly those within the Business School.
Trying to work that academic hustle, but don't know how to get your name out there?\nWondering about the best way to promote your research or track your publications?\nIn this workshop, we'll discuss the reasons why research profiles are important, look at the different types of profiles and their purposes, and brainstorm some strategies to help you manage your online identities. This will help doctoral candidates and early career researchers (ECRs) set the stage for their future research career.
Why are you here? What are you presenting? Who are you presenting to? No, this is not the abstract for “Existentialism with Nietzsche”, it's “Design 101: Presentations, Posters, and PowerPoints for Researchers”! Have you ever seen a research poster or a PowerPoint presentation that was truly terrible and thought, “Wow, I wonder how I could salvage that? I wonder how I can make research approachable through attractive design?” In this session, we will give you tips on what makes good visual design for research. We will walk you through the do's (and some don'ts) and what to consider when putting together a visual research presentation, whether a poster, a PowerPoint slideshow, or another type of medium.
Rayna Dewar Research Services Adviser, University of Auckland
Rayna is a Research Services Advisor within Te Tumu Herenga | Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff, particularly those within the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.
A hands-on introduction to high performance computing (HPC) on a NeSI supercomputer. Members of the NeSI training team will guide attendees through HPC fundamentals including, software environment modules, scheduler use, profiling and scaling. We recommend you attend 'Introduction to the Command Line' or are already familiar with navigating a command line linux environment. Requirements - NeSI account, details provided after registration and closer to the event.
The computational requirements of high impact research seems to grow further beyond what individual groups and institutions can reasonably provide every year. New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) seeks to help meet these requirements for the New Zealand research community.\n\nIn this talk we will go over the core services relating to high performance computing (HPC) that NeSI is able to provide, the reason why HPC might be suitable for your work, and how your research team can gain access to these resources.
Anthony Shaw Support Analyst, National eScience Infrastructure
Applications Support at New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI).
Nidhi Gowdra eResearch Solutions Specialist, University of Auckland
Dr. Nidhi Gowdra has a Bachelor's Degree in Information Sciences, a Master's degree in Computer and Information Sciences and a Ph.D. majoring in Computer Vision. He has published Articles in Top Journals like Pattern Recognition and Conferences such as IECON. He was the Chair of Machine, Signal and Image Processing Session at the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Conference (IECON-2020) and has been an academic supervisor for both undergrads and postgrads. His research interests are predominantly in Deep learning and specifically computer vision domain. He now works at the Centre for eResearch at the University of Auckland as an eresearch solutions specialist.
New to the Python programming language and interested in how it can help your research? Then this intro session is for you! No prior knowledge of Python required, no hands-on coding involved, just sit back with your favourite beverage and find out about the powerful world of Python. The session is split into 2 parts. Part 1 - A holistic overview of Python. Key concepts in Python, how Python is used around the world, and how Python can help you organise, analyse, and visualise your research data. Part 2 - Getting started with Python for research. A live demonstration of how to start using Python to investigate research data, including - how to load in a spreadsheet of data, basic manipulation and processing of the data, how to quickly visualise the data to reveal insights into the dataset, and a bunch of useful links to help you launch your journey into using Python.
Finding it challenging to collaborate with other researchers? Do you want to make your research as accessible and reproducible as possible? Google Colab is a hosted Jupyter notebook service that allows anybody to write and execute python code through the browser, while providing access free of charge to computing resources including GPUs. With a robust free tier, no installation or prerequisites, and a tonne of features, Google Colab can undoubtedly help you. This one-hour introductory workshop will demonstrate the most important features of Google Colab. Some UoA-specific topics will also be covered, such as how to mount your Google Drive or Dropbox so you can utilise your datasets and have your results saved automatically. This workshop's final section will showcase examples of how Google Colab is being used for research and education.
Embark on a practical and engaging journey into the world of Python with our hands-on, 2-hour workshop, designed to demystify one of the most popular and versatile programming languages extensively used in a multitude of research disciplines. Whether you're a complete beginner or merely aiming to refresh your understanding of Python basics, we will have an enriching session that navigates the language's fundamental elements. Our aim is to equip you with a comprehensive understanding of Python's essential syntax, control flow, and data structures, providing a solid foundation for you to explore and exploit the language's immense potential further. This workshop will give you the tools and confidence necessary to start applying Python to your respective research field.
Are you a researcher looking for ways to improve your productivity and efficiency? If so, then you need to check out AI tools for research. AI tools can help you with everything from finding relevant information to writing code. In this presentation, we will explore the role of AI in research and highlight various tools available to researchers, such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool with applications in many fields of science. GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer that offers autocomplete-style suggestions as you code. We will talk about how these tools were developed and how they work. There will also be a demonstration of some real-world applications of these tools. Finally, there will be time to discuss ethical considerations, questions, and answers. This presentation is for researchers of all levels, from beginners to experts. Whether you are just starting your research career or a seasoned veteran, you will learn something new from this presentation. So what are you waiting for? Register for this presentation today and learn how AI can help you take your research to the next level.
Victor Gambarini eResearch Engagement Specialist, University of Auckland
Victor recently joined the Centre for eResearch as an Engagement Specialist. He is completing his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. Victor has experience with Microbiology, Molecular Biology, and Bioinformatics, focusing on Metagenomics and Metatranscriptomics. At the Centre of eResearch, Victor will develop solutions to automate research projects' management and consult with researchers on the management of research data and computational resources.
OpenRefine is a powerful, free, open-source tool for working with messy data - cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data. This introductory, practical workshop will demonstrate how it can help you to - Understand the structure of a data set and resolve inconsistencies; Split data up into more granular parts; Match local data up to other data sets; Enhance a data set with data from other sources.
R is a free and widely used programming language for data analysis and statistics. This workshop aims to introduce you to the R programming language, and RStudio - free software used to work with R. We will cover the most important parts of using R including working with data and creating beautiful plots. There will be hands-on exercises for you to practice R coding and we will share tips-and-tricks to help you start your R journey with confidence!
Communicating data visually is an increasingly important skill that all researchers are expected to have. This session provides an introduction to basic principles of data visualisation including colour theory, chart types, and effective labelling. Understanding these concepts will enable you to create clear, informative, publication-quality graphs and plots. A variety of examples will be demonstrated based on The Grammar of Graphics in R. We will also cover best practices for formatting and styling graphs, as well as techniques for optimising graphs for different audiences and publications. By the end of the session, participants will understand how to effectively communicate their data and insights to a wide range of audiences.
Mandy Phipps-Green Research Services Librarian, University of Otago
Mandy is a newly-minted Research Services Librarian at the University of Otago, having worked in genetic disease research for the past 15 years. She holds a BA(Hons) in Anthropology and an MSc in Forensic Science, and is interested in open access/data/science, data science skills, research data management and bibliometrics. Mandy currently manages the University's of Otago's institutional repository, OUR Archive.
Ben Peters Teaching Fellow, University of Otago
Ben Peters earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Otago. Since graduating he has been working as a teaching fellow in the biochemistry department. He develops teaching resources and has a keen passion for science communication.
You know how to use Open Refine to clean up messy data using facets and clustering, and you're curious about some of its powerful features This demonstration of using transformations will include how to use snippets of reusable code to do things like select part of a sentence, swap author first and last names around, and use Python and Regex in OR. We will also look at using OR to query web based APIs to enrich a dataset.
Anton Angelo Research and Data Librarian, University of Canterbury
Anton has been helping researchers with data at the University of Canterbury for the last 8 years. He is a qualified Carpentries Instructor, with a particular interest in Python and Open Refine. His own research interests are in the impact of theses and dissertations.
This session will introduce attendees to LaTeX, a popular typesetting system and programming language used to create professional-looking documents. We will cover the basics of LaTeX, explore how it differs from Microsoft Word, and equip learners with a solid foundation to build upon in later LaTeX sessions. Although there is an initial learning curve, time invested in learning LaTeX will pay off in the long term by giving you a reliable way to professionally format your documents.
Nelis Drost Senior eResearch Solutions Specialist, University of Auckland
Nelis Drost is a Senior Solutions Specialist at the University of Auckland's eResearch Centre. Nelis is a complex systems modeller whose work has spanned bioinformatics, epidemeology, archeaology and ecology.
Good data organisation is the foundation of any research project. We often organise data in spreadsheets in ways that we as humans want to work with it, but computers require data be organised in particular ways. In order to use tools that make computation more efficient such as programming languages like R or Python, we need to structure our data the way that computers can make sense of it. Since this is where most research projects start, this is where we want to start too! Preparing data for analysis is an important part of the research workflow and some have estimated that this data preparation may take 4x as long as the 'analysis' itself. Some of this involves data cleaning, where errors in the data are identifed and corrected or formatting made consistent, but the foundation is to start with a machine readable datasheet. In this workshop we will cover the basics of good data hygiene and the core principles of the tidy data framework which ensures that your data are machine readable and ready for manipulation/analysis. We encourage you to bring along a device that has access to some kind of spreadsheet software (e.g. GoogleSheets, Excel, etc.), so you can spot the problems and work towards putting tidy data into practice.
Simon Esling Senior eResearch Engagement Specialist, University of Auckland
Simon Esling (Ngāti Raukawa) is a Senior eResearch Engagement Specialist at The University of Auckland. His research interests revolve around the support and enhancement of critical thinking for postgraduate students and research data management for academic staff. His current work is exploring the potential for collective critical thinking as a method of navigating novel information by indigenous researchers. Simon has co-authored (with Maree Davies) The use of Quality Talk to foster critical thinking in a low socio-economic secondary Geography classroom (2020) and co-presented (with Dahlia Han) Outreaching, collaborating and connecting: Specialised services supporting researchers for the Performance-Based Research Fund (2017) at the eResearch Australasia Conference, Brisbane.
What do Lorde, Seinfeld and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have in common? Properties of all three can be represented as text, whether that be song lyrics, episode scripts, or theme songs. Text allows for a unified representation of data, and researchers across different disciplines and methods all draw from text in different ways. Knowing even just a few basic computational linguistic methods can increase your efficiency as a researcher and open new avenues for research using your data. This short, introductory workshop will demonstrate how to perform basic operations on text, such as counting the frequency of different word types, computing measures of lexical diversity, and performing more complex operations such as sentiment analysis. No prior knowledge of programming is assumed.
Stephen Skalicky Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington
Stephen is a computational social scientist who researches connections between language and cognition. His research employs natural language processing, text analytics/classification, behavioural experiments, and statistical modelling to explore different lexical, syntactic, and semantic aspects of creative language, such as sarcasm, metaphor, humour, and satire.
Reviewing the literature is an important part of the research process. Organising relevant papers and findings are more than just data entry or bibliographic tasks, you also need to be able to analyse and integrate this material with the qualitative data you are gathering. This one-hour demonstration will provide an overview of NVivo's functionality with regard to literature reviews. Importing and coding literature, running queries on published material, and working with bibliographic data in conjunction with your NVivo project will all be covered.
Researchers spend a lot of time capturing, organising, and consulting sources, so it makes sense to use a good reference manager. Zotero is a free open-source reference manager built by researchers for researchers. It is simple to learn, yet powerful and feature-rich, and will save you countless hours when wrangling your sources. In this two hour workshop you'll learn how to use Zotero to capture, organise, and cite your references when you need them.
There's a lot more to NVivo than initially meets the eye! In this webinar we'll be showcasing our favourite features of NVivo including matrix coding queries, explore and comparison diagrams, and mind-maps. This session is perfect for researchers who are new to NVivo, as well as those who are familiar with the basics and curious to know what else is possible.
This session will introduce you to the Qualtrics survey tool, with a particular focus on how it can be used to help your research. Qualtrics is an easy to use, yet powerful tool that allows you to create and distribute fully customisable surveys for a broad range of purposes. The session will traduce you to setting up a survey, options for distribution, and options for analysing your data.
Hayden Thorne Digital Research Consultant, Victoria University of Wellington
Dr Hayden Thorne is a Digital Research Consultant in the Centre for Academic Development at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. He works on a regular basis with both academics and professional staff to both optimise their survey setup and perform effective analysis of the data that is collected.
This session will demonstrate the process of statistical analysis in R. We will work through an example from start to finish, including a discussion about how to select an appropriate statistical analysis, implement it in R, and present and interpret the results.
A hands-on workshop where we will explore some of the built-in demo data sets available in R. We will apply commonly used statistical analyses such as linear regression, independent-sample t-tests and chi-squared tests, discussing the output and how we might present the results for publication. Please install R and RStudio prior to the session.
Lisa Woods Statistical Consultant, Victoria University of Wellington
Dr. Lisa Woods works as a Statistical Consultant at Victoria University of Wellington, providing statistical advice to postgraduate students and academic staff.
Are you a researcher looking for ways to improve your productivity and efficiency? If so, then you need to check out AI tools for research. AI tools can help you with everything from finding relevant information to writing code. In this presentation, we will explore the role of AI in research and highlight various tools available to researchers, such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool with applications in many fields of science. GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer that offers autocomplete-style suggestions as you code. We will talk about how these tools were developed and how they work. There will also be a demonstration of some real-world applications of these tools. Finally, there will be time to discuss ethical considerations, questions, and answers. This presentation is for researchers of all levels, from beginners to experts. Whether you are just starting your research career or a seasoned veteran, you will learn something new from this presentation. So what are you waiting for? Register for this presentation today and learn how AI can help you take your research to the next level.
Open Access to publications and other research outputs ensures you get maximum exposure and recognition for your work. Open publications are viewed, downloaded, and cited at higher rates than closed publications. There are free ways to make your work open regardless of where you publish, so you don't have to publish in OA journals or pay steep publication fees to enjoy the benefits of OA. In this one-hour workshop you'll learn how to make your publications open for free while respecting copyright and publisher agreements.
Maria Mitenkova , University of Auckland
Maria has a PhD in English literature from the University of Auckland. She provides services to support and enhance the research activities of postgraduates and staff within the Faculty of Arts.
Open Access to publications and other research outputs ensures you get maximum exposure and recognition for your work. Open publications are viewed, downloaded, and cited at higher rates than closed publications. There are free ways to make your work open regardless of where you publish, so you don't have to publish in OA journals or pay steep publication fees to enjoy the benefits of OA. In this one-hour workshop you'll learn how to make your publications open for free while respecting copyright and publisher agreements.
Trying to work that academic hustle, but don't know how to get your name out there?\nWondering about the best way to promote your research or track your publications?\nIn this workshop, we'll discuss the reasons why research profiles are important, look at the different types of profiles and their purposes, and brainstorm some strategies to help you manage your online identities. This will help doctoral candidates and early career researchers (ECRs) set the stage for their future research career.
Shannon Ring , University of Auckland
Shannon Ring's impressive professional journey includes her notable tenure of 7 years and counting at the University of Auckland, where she has honed her skills and laid the foundation for her successful career. As an alumna of the university, Shannon holds a Conjoint BSc (Biology, Geography) and a BA (Languages), as well as a Postgraduate Diploma in Translation/Interpreting, reflecting her dedication to acquiring a well-rounded education. Drawing on her extensive experience in the industry, Shannon has skilfully engaged in Career Conversations with individuals and groups, helping them navigate the complexities of career development. Her expertise developed from 8+ years working in recruitment agencies, working in-house in aspects of human resources, and recruitment for companies, as well as her background in career counselling and coaching, uniquely positions her to address a wide range of career challenges faced by students and graduates. Across this time Shannon has trained in using LinkedIn, both as a Recruiter – recruiting in Industry, as well as developing her own use to network and create exposure for her own mindset and career purpose coaching company, Clara & Calma. She has secured two roles and three contracts from her work on Linkedin – so is a strong advocate for the use of online networking for professionals and more importantly tertiary students wanting to develop their career paths. She is extremely excited to be able to share her expertise so that those interested, can benefit from her depth of knowledge in the area.
Learn about the different capabilities and skills needed for a successful career in academia, tips for planning your career in academia, and what transferable skills academics possess which are relevant outside of academia.
Julia Mouatt , University of Auckland
Julia has a background in academia with a PhD in molecular ecology from the University of Copenhagen and a postdoc focusing on population genetics conducted with the U.S. Geological Survey at Oregon State University. After academia she worked as a product manager at the kiwi start-up Publons, which was acquired by Clarivate in 2017, where she was the head of the Web of Science Academy. While at Publons and Clarivate she helped develop online research integrity training courses and practical courses on how to peer review for journals, and set up a global peer review mentoring community built into the Web of Science Academy. In March 2023 she took on the role of researcher development manager at the University of Auckland to support academics in their professional development at all stages of their career.
Researchers are increasingly utilising digital tools and technologies to make research bigger, faster, more efficient or tackle problems in new ways. However, digital tools come with risks - web applications for collecting data, virtual machines for running analysis, and sharing research data online can lead to your data being lost or held to ransom. How would your research project cope with a significant delay as data and systems were recovered? Join this session to hear about the risks and our advice to avoid or address frequently seen vulnerabilities.
James Harper Chief Information Security Officer, University of Auckland
James Harper is Chief Information Security Officer at the University of Auckland, leading the establishment of this position within the institution. Prior to this he held roles in digital architecture and infrastructure operations. James promotes a risk-managed approach to cybersecurity, positioning the practice as an enabler rather than a blocker. With qualifications in Computer Science and Law, James brings a unique perspective to the technical and human challenges of modern cybersecurity threats. He has transitioned the University to a framework-led approach to governing and managing cybersecurity, allowing objective assessment of capabilities and risks, and the ability for priorities and decisions to be backed by data.
UoA Security Office provides 7 strategies with actionable steps to help keep your research safe and secure. Attendess will learn how to include security through the entire data lifecycle in partnership with university services. We will provide some practical demos and answers to your questions on how to enable security within research.
Michael Karich Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, University of Auckland
Michael Karich is Deputy Chief Information Security Officer - Research at the University of Auckland, NeSI, and UniServices. Across these roles, he strives to support and enable secure research operations across the entire data lifecycle. Prior to this, he held roles in HPC and cloud infrastructure, data management, and research administration. With qualifications in Computer Science and IT Operations, Michael pulls from a broad background to build and enable secure yet efficient research. He is currently focusing on the enhancement of internationally known capability through governance, staff enablement, and visibility.
A brief overview of REDCap, a software tool which can help you create and manage research databases and participant surveys, including those containing sensitive data.
A brief overview of REDCap, a software tool which can help you create and manage research databases and participant surveys, including those containing sensitive data.
Have you got a big paper coming out that you think is newsworthy? The Science Media Centre can help you get journalists' attention. This session will introduce you to Scimex - our online portal for promoting embargoed research to registered journalists - alongside our other tools and resources for media engagement. You will learn some tips and tricks on what to do when a journalist calls, and how to ensure your expertise has impact.
Katrin O'Donnell Kaimanaaki Pāpāho | Media Advisor, Science Media Centre New Zealand
Katrin first joined the Science Media Centre in 2021 while completing her Masters of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. She is passionate about making science accessible to support civic engagement in complex issues, and supporting researchers to feel confident talking to the media.
UoA Security Office provides 7 strategies with actionable steps to help keep your research safe and secure. Attendess will learn how to include security through the entire data lifecycle in partnership with university services. We will provide some practical demos and answers to your questions on how to enable security within research.