Category: Training Session

Hierarchical Generalized Additive Models

Posted by on in Led by fellows, Training events, Training Session, Working groups

On March 3rd, 2025, BIOS² will host a new training on hierarchical generalized additive models (HGAMs) by fellows Camille Lévesque and Katherine Hébert.

This course is designed to demystify hierarchical modelling as powerful tools to model population dynamics, spatial distributions, and any non-linear relationships in your ecological data. The training will be divided into two blocks. First, we will cover hierarchies in biology, data, and in models to understand what hierarchical models are, some of the forms they can take, and the fundamentals of how they work. Second, we will introduce latent variable modelling as a way to explain even more of the variation in our response variables, to better disentangle the hierarchies of variation in our data. Both blocks will include a theoretical presentation followed by hands-on coding exercises to implement and interpret hierarchical GAMs.

This training will be given in English, and the coding exercises will be done in R. We recommend installing R and RStudio prior to the workshop, and will send more detailed instructions about packages to install and data to download in the days before the workshop.

We recommend previous experience with GAMs before taking this training. If you would like to follow an introduction to GAMs before this workshop, please have a look at Eric Pedersen’s Introduction to GAMs (https://bios2.usherbrooke.ca/2021/10/20/workshop-gams-2021/), the Québec Centre for Biodiversity Science’s Workshop 8: GAMs (http://r.qcbs.ca/workshop08/book-en/) or take this BIOS²+QCBS hybrid training that will happen on February 28th, 2025.

What: Short course on hierarchical generalized additive models (3h)
When: March 3, 1pm-4pm EST (includes 15 minute break)
Where: Online on Zoom
Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_JZMQEXhRaqxVvCKUqM4jA

Intro to GAMs : learning nonlinear curves from data

Posted by on in Training events, Training Session

BIOS² is delighted to invite you to a training session on Quarto, organised by our partner program, QCBS!

Ecologists often have data divided into groups, and within each group there are many predictors that might be important. But how to these predictors impact the outcome? Are their effects nonlinear? If you have a time series, are there cycles or another kind of complex dynamic? What about space?
GAMs are a great way to learn curving lines from data. In this workshop you’ll learn some basics of how GAMs work, how to think about them, and practice fitting them using the R package mgcv.

When: Friday, February 28th, 2025 – 13h-16h ET
Where: Online and at Concordia Library LB-322 (third floor of the library building)
Registrations: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/s0agwLV_TcqB9e0KFC_39w

How to use Quarto

Posted by on in Training events, Training Session

BIOS² is delighted to invite you to a training session on Quarto, organised by our partner program, QCBS!

Quarto is a quick and easy way to turn your R scripts into beautiful documents, presentations and even websites. It’s a new and improved version of Rmarkdown. This workshop will showcase the benefits of Quarto, including quotes, figures, maps and more. Participants may be familiar with Rmarkdown or new to it. We’ll finish by working on a project: choose between a presentation, an article or a website!

When: 18 Feb 2025 Tuesday – 2pm to 4pm ET
Where: Online and at Concordia Library LB-322 (third floor of the library)
Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/R4cL3vLzRiiNBDk-vYMSyQ

Workshop R and Git: from code to collaboration

Posted by on in Led by fellows, Training events, Training Session

BIOS2 is holding a one-day workshop on programming and version control for data science and research. Our newly Certified Carpentries Instructors Francis Banville and Gabriel Dansereau will be giving an introduction to the Tidyverse, a collection of R packages for data manipulation and visualisation. They will also introduce Git, a collaboration and version control tool useful for research work. The lessons covered will be inspired by those developed by The Carpentries (Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists and Version Control with Git).

The workshop is free and will take place in person at the Campus MIL of University of Montreal (with snacks!) and the language of instruction will be French. We have a very limited number of places, so register early!

You must have R and RStudio and Git Bash installed before the workshop. If you need help with installation, please email Francis or Gabriel, or arrive 60-30 minutes before the workshop starts.

What: Workshop on R (Tidyverse) and Git
When: Saturday 18 January from 9:00 to 17:00 ET
Where: Campus MIL (Université de Montréal), room B-2061
Contacts: Francis Banville (francis.banville [at] umontreal.ca) and Gabriel Dansereau (gabriel.dansereau [at] umontreal.ca)

Registration form:

Dealing with spatial data in R – workshop

Posted by on in Led by fellows, Training events, Training Session

The first workshop of the 2024-2025 calendar will be about spatial data analysis, and registrations are now open! Perfect for researchers and data analysts with a foundational understanding of R, this workshop will cover Google Colab, reproducible workflows, biodiversity and spatial data sets available online, shapefile and raster operations, and Google Earth Engine (GEE) integration. You should have access to Google Suite applications like Google Drive and Google Colab via an email account to participate. The workshop instructors are Lionel Leston (University of Alberta) and Mobina Gholamhosseini (Université de Montréal).

Registration Details

Date: September 17th, 19th, 24th and 26th, 2024
Time: 10 am PT / 1 pm PT
Venue: Online (Zoom and Google Colab)
Registrations: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkdOmsqT4vGNTLsbPoZIezkRH2x6Vhc8zJ

Registrations are free and open to everyone, but seats are limited. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at pgm_bios2 [at] usherbrooke.ca.

Open Reviewers Workshop

Posted by on in Blog, Led by fellows, Training events, Training Session

In July, BIOS2 will host a 2-hour workshop on open peer review, hosted by our fellow Allegra Spensieri. Allegra has been selected as a PREreview Champion and is now bringing to our community the principles of a fair and open peer review, with the support of PREreview.

PREreview is an organization that develops infrastructure to support the pre-print peer review process from start to end. They develop and provide training on how to write helpful reviews for preprints, and have built a platform to submit preprint reviews on, as well as a community of researchers. The open reviewers workshop is a training program that PREreview has designed for researchers at all levels to learn how to write equitable peer reviews.

This 2-hour workshop will focus on the basics of open, preprint peer reviewing and becoming aware of biases in peer review. Registrations are free and open to everyone, but seats are limited.

When: July 10th, 2024 – 1pm EST
Where: Online
Registrations: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIoce6tqz0vGtdpZPVtuBKMpLyxjR9WvqjN