🧠 Collaborative Scientific Programming for Cognitive Scientists

This hands-on workshop is designed for cognitive scientists who already use Python in their research and want to write more robust, reproducible, and collaborative code.

We won’t teach you Python—but we will show you how to organize your projects like a software engineer, use Git and GitHub effectively, and build workflows that strengthen your research proposals, publications, and collaborations.

By the end of this workshop, your code won’t just run—it will be clear, shareable, reusable, and proposal-ready.

✅ Prerequisite: Basic proficiency in Python (e.g., you’ve written scripts for data analysis, experiments, or modeling).
🎯 Goal: Turn your research code into a professional, sustainable asset.

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📅 Workshop Schedule

Day 1: Version Control & Project Foundations

Time	Duration	Topic 1	Topic 2
9:00 – 10:30	1.5 hrs	Welcome, Overview on Workshop	Introduction to Python
10:30 – 10:45	15 min	Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15	1.5 hrs	Why Git? Managing Research Code Over Time	Python Packages for Research
12:15 – 13:30	1 hr	Lunch & Prayer Break
13:30 – 14:45	1.5 hrs	Git Offline (Commits, Branches)	Git Online (GitHub: Repos, Issues, PRs)
14:45 – 15:00	15 min	Coffee Break
15:00 – 16:30	1.5 hrs	Agile mindset in Research	Project Management for Research
16:30 – 16:45	15 min	Coffee Break
16:45 – 18:00	1.25 hrs	Form Teams & Define Projects	Write a Backlog for Your Cognitive Science Project

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Day 2: Building Maintainable & Testable Code

Time	Duration	Topic 1	Topic 2
9:00 – 10:30	1.5 hrs	Clean Code & Documentation for Science	Modular Code Structure
10:30 – 10:45	15 min	Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15	1.5 hrs	Reproducible Environments (Conda/venv)	Writing Unit Tests for Analysis Pipelines
12:15 – 13:30	1 hr	Lunch & Prayer Break
13:30 – 14:45	1.5 hrs	Daily Stand-up & Project Work	Collaborative Coding on GitHub
14:45 – 15:00	15 min	Coffee Break
15:00 – 18:00	3 hrs	Team Project Work	Team Project Work

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Day 3: From Code to Impact

Time	Duration	Topic 1	Topic 2
9:00 – 10:30	1.5 hrs	Introduction to Visualizing	Visualizing Data & Results
10:30 – 10:45	15 min	Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:15	1.5 hrs	CI/CD, Packaging & Docker	Copyright and licensing, Workshop Feedback
12:15 – 13:30	1 hr	Lunch & Prayer Break
13:30 – 14:45	1.5 hrs	Team Project Work	Team Project Work
14:45 – 15:00	15 min	Coffee Break
15:00 – 16:30	1.5 hrs	Finalize Project for Presentation	Finalize Project for Presentation
16:30 – 16:45	15 min	Coffee Break
16:45 – 18:00	1.25 hrs	Team Project Presentations	Team Project Presentations

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Why This Matters for Scientists

• Funding agencies (e.g., NIH, NSF, EU Horizon) increasingly require reproducible, well-documented code.
• A clean GitHub profile with organized projects strengthens grant and job applications.
• Version control lets you safely experiment without breaking your analysis pipeline.
• Collaborating via GitHub makes co-authoring code as smooth as co-authoring papers.
• Well-structured code is easier to reuse across studies—saving you weeks of work.

This workshop helps you turn your scripts into research infrastructure.

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📦 Setup Requirements

Before attending, please:

1. Install Git
2. Create a GitHub account
3. Have Python 3.8+ installed (Download or install with pip)
4. Install Conda (recommended) or be familiar with venv/pipenv
5. (Optional but helpful) Install VS Code or your preferred editor

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📄 License

This workshop material is licensed under the MIT License—you’re free to reuse, adapt, and share the code and templates for your own teaching or research.

See the full license in LICENSE.

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🔬 Great science deserves great software. Let’s build it together.