Resources

SPARK provides a multitude of resources for all interested parties, both within the CSD department and across campus.

You can find further information regarding the different types below.

Consulting and support

One of SPARK’s main endeavors is to provide consulting and direct support for researchers across all levels concerning everything related to

• data science, including:
  • data standardization and management
  • preprocessing and analyses
  • visualization and evaluation
  • analysis workflows
• AI, including:
  • development of new and application of existing models
  • fine-tuning of existing models
  • model evaluation
• computational work, including:
  • programming in bash, python and R (other languages such as HTML or Matlab are also supported)
  • version control for code and data
  • computational environments, e.g. virtualization and HPC
  • software development and continuous integration
• open and reproducible science, including:
  • data and code sharing
  • data management plans
  • open repositories
  • reliability, robustness, reproducibility and generalizability of analyses

This concerns active, ie currently running projects, as well as the preparation and submission of grants.

If you would like to talk to us about any of these topics, please consult the contact page on how to best reach us.

Training and education

Regarding all of the above-mentioned aspects, SPARK is providing regular training via open educational resources, free for everyone to use. These materials can used as a self-learning resource and are taught as modules with instructors from the SPARK team. Importantly, across all, only open-source and free tools are being utilized in order to allow everyone to participate.

You can find the current list of modules below:

If you have a question concerning the materials, please consult the contact page on how to best reach us or use the respective GitHub repository or the hypothes.is feature on the module website.

Community building and collaboration

SPARK is committed to foster an open and inclusive environment for everyone feels safe and supported. We therefore focus on creating respective opportunities and spaces for people to come and work together. There are enough “science islands” and we have to work towards building bridges and changing the defaults.

If that’s something that’s interesting to you, please have a look at our corresponding efforts below:

If you would like to join for any of these, please feel free to just stop by or consult the contact page on how to best reach us.

Repositories and Platforms

Given our mission, we aim to make as much of our work publicly available, no matter of code, datasets, etc. . To make this outcomes as FAIR as possible we follow existing standards and best practices, as well as utilize a wide range of community-supported platforms. Please make sure to also check out our presence there.