Nov 25th - Nov 27th 2025 / Python for Scientific Computing

News and Important info

This is a medium-advanced course in Python tools such as NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, and Pandas. It is suitable for people who know basic Python and want to understand some internals and important libraries for science - basically, how a typical scientist actually uses Python. Read the learner personas to see if the course is right for you. Prerequisites include basic programming in Python.

Part of Scientific Computing in Practice lecture series at Aalto University, in partnership with CodeRefinery.

Practical information

Registration

General registration: please register here

This is an online course streamed via Twitch (the CodeRefinery channel) so that anyone may follow along without registration. You do not need a Twitch account. There is a collaborative notes link which is used for asking questions during the course. The actual material is here.

While the stream is available even without providing personal data, if you register you may get collaborative notes access for asking questions and will support our funding by contributing to our attendance statistics.

Schedule

The course consists of three online hands-on sessions 4h each with lunch break in between. All times EET (convert 9:50 to your timezone). The schedule is tentative, we may run earlier or later, so join early if attending a single lesson.

Warning

Timezones! Times in this page in the Europe/Helsinki timezone. In Central Europe, the course starts at 8:50! (convert 9:50 Helsinki to your timezone)

  • (week before) Installation help sessions (for sites that offer them)

  • Please connect to all sessions 10 minutes early: icebreakers and intro already starts then.

  • Tue 25.nov, 9:50-15:00

    • 09:50 Icebreakers and warming up (Enrico)

    • 10:00 Intro (Enrico)

    • 10:15 Jupyter (Diana, Hemanadhan)

    • 11:00 NumPy (Marijn, Susa)

    • 12:00 Lunch break

    • 13:00 Pandas (Ashwin, Susa)

    • 14:30 Xarray (Marijn, Thomas)

    • 15:00 End of day 1

  • Wed 26.nov, 9:50-15:00

  • Thu 27.nov, 9:50-15:00

Preparation

Prerequisites include basic programming in Python.

Software installation:

Mental preparation: Online workshops can be a productive format, but it takes some effort to get ready. Browse these resources:

Credits

If you are affiliated with a higher education organisation, it is possible to obtain a certificate from the course with a little extra work. The certificate is equivalent to 1 ECTS and your study supervisor will be able to register it as a credit in your university study credit system. Please make sure that your supervisor/study program accepts it.

Learners with a valid Aalto student number will get the credit via the course [SCI-L1010 Scientific Computing Skills](https://mycourses.aalto.fi/course/section.php?id=275224).

To obtain a certificate/credit, we expect you to have registered to the course by 27/11/2025, follow the 4 sessions and provide us with at least the following 5 documents via email (1 text document, 3 or more python scripts/notebooks). Please remember to add your name and surname to all submitted files. Only submissions coming from an email address of a higher education organisation will be processed.

  • 1 text document (PDF or txt or anything for text): For each of the 3 days, write a short paragraph (learning diary) to highlight your personal reflections about what you have found useful, which topic inspired you to go deeper, and more in general what you liked and what could be improved.

  • 3 (or more) .py scripts/notebooks: For each of the 3 days take one code example from the course materials and make sure you can run it locally as a “.py” script or as a jupyter notebook. Modify it a bit according to what inspires you: adding more comments, testing the code with different inputs, expanding it with something related to your field of research. There is no right or wrong way of doing this, but please submit a python script/notebook that we are eventually able to run and test on our local computers. This is an opportunity for you to learn and experiment.

These 4 (or more) documents should be sent before 31/December/2025 23:59CET to scip@aalto.fi. If the evaluation criteria are met for each of the 4 (or more) documents, you will receive a certificate by middle of January 2026. Please note that we do not track course attendance and if you missed one session, recordings will be available on Twitch immediately after the streaming ends.

As this is a very simple homework, the use of generative AI (like ChatGPT) is not allowed. We also have access to ChatGPT and we know how to write prompts that can generate the answers to these homework, so it is very easy for us to check when AI was used. We value your words and code with typos or grammar mistakes, and we do not need a polished AI version. This is an opportunity for you to learn, and you won’t learn from copy-pasting generated answers. Submissions suspected of being generated by AI will be rejected.

Additional course info at: scip -at- aalto.fi

Community standards

This is a large course, and we will have many diverse groups attending it. There will be people attending at all different levels, from “just learned Python” to “been using Python for a while and want to see some tips and tricks”. Everyone will choose their own path, some people will be more hands-on or more “watching”. Everyone is be both a teacher and a learner. Even our instructors are always learning things and make mistakes (and this is part of the point!). Please learn from our mistakes, too!

This course consists of both lectures, hands-on exercises, and demos. It is designed to have a range of basic to advanced topics: there should be something for everyone.

The main point this course is the exercises. If you are with a group, we hope people to work together and help each other. We expect everyone to help each other as best as they can with respect for different levels of knowledge - at the same time be aware of your own limitations. No one is better than anyone else, we just have different existing skills and backgrounds.

If there is anything wrong, tell us - for example on the shared notes document. If you need to contact us privately, you can message us at scip@aalto.fi.

Code of Conduct

We are committed to creating a friendly and respectful place for learning, teaching, and contributing. You can read our Code of Conduct here. If you need to report any violation of the code of conduct, you can email the organisers at scip _at_ aalto.fi, alternatively you can also use this web form.

Material

Partners

This course is hosted by Aalto Scientific Computing (Aalto University, Finland) and CodeRefinery. Our livestream, registration, materials, and published videos are free for all in the spirit of open science and education, but certain partners provide extra benefits for their own audience.

Staff and partner organizations:

  • Richard Darst (ASC, Aalto University) (instructor, instructor coordinator, director)

  • Enrico Glerean (ASC, Aalto University) (instructor, coordinator, communication, helper)

  • Johan Hellsvik (PDC, NAISS, KTH) (instructor, helper)

  • Diana Iusan (UPPMAX, NAISS, Uppsala University) (instructor, helper)

  • Ashwin Mohanan (ENCCS / RISE) (instructor, helper)

  • Thomas Pfau (ASC, Aalto University) (instructor, helper)

  • Sabry Razick (University of Oslo) (instructor, helper)

  • Simo Tuomisto (ASC, Aalto University) (instructor, helper)

  • Marijn Van Vliet (Aalto University) (instructor, helper)

  • Susanne Merz (ASC, Aalto University)(instructor, helper)

  • Hemanadhan Myneni (University of Iceland)(instructor, helper)

  • Lauri Niemi (CSC - IT Center for Science)(instructor, helper)

  • Luca Ferranti (ASC, Aalto University)(instructor, helper)

  • …

…and many more contributors to the learning materials on Github.

Contact

See also

Last year edition