VS Code & GitHub for Researchers

Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 9.30am to 10.30am

VS Code & GitHub for Researchers
Wednesday 10 June, 9:30 am – 10:30 am
OxPop/BDI Seminar room 1
Led by – Emma Walker, DPhil student, Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health + Big Data Institute, University of Oxford

This hands-on session introduces VS Code and GitHub for those who want to improve their day-to-day workflow and learn better software engineering practices.

We’ll cover how to set up a clean VS Code workspace, structure a small code base, and use Git and GitHub to version-control your work and collaborate with others.

During the session, we will combine both presenting, and a hands-on workshop where participants will learn what is VS code and GitHub, connect it to BMRC, clone an example repository, walk through good practices for code base setup, and push changes back to their own GitHub.

This session will cover:
1. Connecting VS Code to BMRC for remote development
2. Setting up a VS Code workspace and useful extensions
3. Structuring a simple code base (folders, scripts, README)
4. Running scripts on the cluster with VS code
5. Covering Git essentials and how to use the VS code integrated commands to push code changes to GitHub
6. Software engineering tips for researchers

Learning Objectives:
1. Set up VS code integrated with BMRC and GitHub.
2. Structure a small code base.
3. Understand what GitHub is and the use for researchers
4. Initialise a Git repository and push it to GitHub
5. Apply Git commands to track and share codeClone existing repositories from GitHub to their local machine

Intended Audience:
Anyone wanting who is coding at any level, wanting to learn software engineering practices, how to better improve workflows, and how to use github.

Pre-Course Preparation - Some basic familiarity with writing and running code in any language (e.g. Python or R) is helpful, but no prior experience with Git, GitHub, or VS Code is assumed. Download vs code / set up a GitHub account.

Follow BMRC set up + github keys set up (instructions will be shared nearer the time).

Registration - https://forms.office.com/e/2zn7zvSa2q?origin=lprLink
Requirements - Bring your own laptop with VS code downloaded

Speaker(s): Emma Walker (Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health, Big Data Institute, University of Oxford)

Venue: Big Data Institute - Seminar room 1 - Seminar room 1 Big Data Institute Old Road Campus Oxford Oxfordshire OX3 7LF United Kingdom

Department: Big Data Institute - NDPH (Unit)

Organiser: Sumeeta Maheshwari

Host: Prof Thomas Nichols

Register here: https://forms.office.com/e/2zn7zvSa2q?origin=lprLink