Practical Computing for Biologists

Designed to address a lack of computer skills training in biological science education, this volume presents problem-centered instruction for using basic computer programming in biological research and data manipulation and presentation. Based on the Mac OsX operating system, and heavily centered on its Unix components, this guide presents an overview of the Unix command line, regular expressions, scripting and Python programming all aimed at speeding up or improving the quality of biological research. Additional chapters deal with graphical presentation of data and advanced topics such as network communications and interfacing with electronic devices. The work includes color illustrations and code examples and access to a companion website is provided. Haddock is a research biologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Dunn is professor of evolutionary biology at Brown University. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Steven Haddock is a Research Scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and adjunct Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying bioluminescence and biodiversity of gelatinous zooplankton. He started programming in BASIC on an Apple ][ and began his undergraduate studies in engineering before deciding to change fields. He took this programming background with him to his graduate studies in Marine Biology, where he quickly realized the advantages that computing skills offered and felt compelled to help foster these abilities in others. He has developed many utilities and devices for research, including instruments to monitor bioluminescence from fireflies, a freezer monitoring system, a web-based conference registration database, and a PCR calculator for smartphones. In addition to teaching invertebrate zoology and writing a booklet to teach the technique of blue-water scuba diving, he has given tutorials in computing to students and administrators. His interest in education extends to his Bioluminescence Web Page (http://lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/) and the Jellywatch.org citizen-science website (www.jellywatch.org).

Casey Dunn, an Assistant Professor at Brown University, does research that has a large computational component but always in conjunction with work in the field and lab. His first interest in computers stemmed from building electronics, and he further developed his computational skills working in Silicon Valley while an undergraduate. As his data sets grew larger and larger during grad school and his postdoc, he found himself reaching back to his computer background more often. In the course of his own research and helping other biologists with their computational challenges, he became concerned about the mismatch between training opportunities and the real day-to-day computational problems biologists face. In addition to teaching invertebrate biology, evolution, and development, his educational activities include the websites siphonophores.org and creaturecast.org. Dr. Dunn is the recipient of the National Science Foundation's 2011 Alan T. Waterman Award, recognizing an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF.