Best Practices in Research Software Development Part 2
April 16, 2026
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM America/Chicago
Location
Online (Zoom)
Calendar
Download iCal FileDescription
Research software now underlies a vast proportion of published scientific work, yet many researchers have never received formal training in software engineering practices. This workshop provides researchers with essential best practices for writing reproducible, sustainable, and collaborative research code. We'll cover version control with Git, project organization, documentation, testing strategies, reproducible environments, and how to make your research software citable and reusable. Whether you're writing analysis scripts, developing computational tools, or managing a lab's codebase, these practices will protect your research, accelerate your work, and enable effective collaboration. We encourage all UIC researchers who write code as part of their research to attend.
Learning Objectives
- Implement version control with Git and GitHub for tracking code changes and enabling collaboration
- Structure research projects using standardized templates that separate code, data, and documentation
- Write effective documentation, including README files, docstrings, and inline comments
- Apply testing strategies appropriate for numerical and scientific code
- Create reproducible computational environments using virtual environments and containers
- Choose appropriate open source licenses for research software
- Make research software citable through CITATION.cff files, Zenodo archival, and software papers
- Set up continuous integration workflows with GitHub Actions for automated testing
- Apply FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) to research software
Registration
Registration for this webinar ends on April 9, 2026. Space is limited, so register soon.
Date posted
Jan 6, 2026
Date updated
Jan 6, 2026