Astronomy Research Preperation Seminar (Astro-RPS)

I co-designed a new seminar; Astro-RPS at Yale as an introduction to the python programming language in the context of physics and astrophysics applications.

I co-taught the seminar with Imad Pasha, Yasmeen Asali and Will Cerny. Because all research nowadays requires the use of extensive programming, in this seminar, we start from square one to build a strong foundation. We cover how to install and navigate the programming ecosystem such as the terminal/shell, before moving into how to create scientific programs in python to carry out calculations one might use in a research project. This seminar was primarily intended for students with little to no exposure to coding or astronomy research.

Our goal is to better prepare students for programming-based courses as well as summer research positions. This year was the first year we taught the seminar and we are happy to report that several RPS students are currenlty working on research over the summer! If you would like to learn more please reach out and visit our teaching materials page