Dear Life Science Community,

We are pleased to announce an upcoming workshop titled “Data Visualization for Biological Sciences”, to be held online via Zoom from 18 to 20 November 2025.

🗓️ Overview & Goals

In this practical, interactive course, you'll learn to create engaging, scientifically accurate visualizations specifically tailored for biological research. Using programming tools like R and Python, along with graphic editing software such as Inkscape, you'll gain essential skills for clearly and effectively visualizing genomic and biological data.

Some prior programming experience is required for this course. Our aim is not to dive deeply into every coding detail, but rather to equip you with practical skills to adapt existing visualization scripts for your own data. Participants will collaborate in small groups (3-4 participants per group, about 10 groups), creating visualizations from provided datasets that cover topics like allele frequencies, mutation patterns, and other genomic data.

Additionally, participants are encouraged to explore AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini for coding support, troubleshooting, and inspiration, as they work on their visualizations. We'll discuss effective and responsible ways to use such tools, addressing both their advantages and potential pitfalls.

Each session concludes with group discussions and instructor-led feedback to help refine visualizations and deepen understanding of best practices, visualization design principles, and publication standards.

This course is designed for PhD students, postdocs and early-career researchers in biology, bioinformatics, and related fields. While the concepts and skills taught are broadly applicable across the life sciences, our use cases and datasets are primarily drawn from genomics.

📋 What to Bring / Requirements

A laptop (Windows, macOS or Linux) with R and Python installed. Alternatively, Google Colab can be used for Python and R exercises.
Access to your preferred AI assistant (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini, or another system) for coding support and troubleshooting (or a Google account)
Inkscape (a free, open-source vector graphics editor)

Prerequisite: Some programming experience is expected.

🕒 Schedule Highlights

Tue, Nov 18, 10:00–17:00 — Foundations & Basic Plotting: scatter plots, bar plots, violin plots, boxplots, histograms; data handling and annotations.
Wed, Nov 19, 10:00–17:00 — Advanced Techniques: dimensionality reduction (PCA), annotated heatmaps (e.g. via ComplexHeatmap in R), color theory, layout strategies.
Thu, Nov 20, 10:00–17:00 — Publication-Ready Graphics: polishing visualizations, using Inkscape, handling DPI and formats, assembling multi-panel figures

Registration deadline: 02 November 2025

If you are interested, please consider applying soon, as spaces are limited: https://events.hifis.net/event/3045/registrations/2993/

We hope you can join us for this exciting opportunity to improve your data visualization skills!

Best regards,

Carmen Paulmann

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Dr. Carmen Paulmann

Project Manager

Computational Biology for Infection Research

Head of Department: Prof. Alice McHardy

Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research GmbH

Inhoffenstrasse 7

38124 Braunschweig

Germany

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung GmbH | Inhoffenstraße 7 | 38124 Braunschweig | www.helmholtz-hzi.de

Vorsitzende des Aufsichtsrates: Frau MinDir'in Prof. Dr. Veronika von Messling, Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt
Stellvertreter: MinDirig Rüdiger Eichel, Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur
Wissenschaftlicher Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Josef Penninger - Administrativer Geschäftsführer: Christian Scherf
Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH)
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Braunschweig
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Braunschweig, HRB 477

Unsere Hinweise zum Datenschutz finden Sie hier: https://www.helmholtz-hzi.de/de/service/datenschutz/