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CodeBMB: Computational Literacy for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education

Webinar hosted by RCSB PDB and the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory.

NSF Awards # 2518732 & 2518733 Collaborative Research: Promoting Computational Literacy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education | April 30, 2026

This virtual crash course is designed to introduce novices (with little or no coding experience) to a pedagogical foundation for coding, the Google Colab environment, GitHub, and the fundamentals of Python scripting.

Coding exercises will begin with variables, loops, and logic and will proceed to plotting and calculations based on linear and nonlinear regression curve fitting. You will leave the workshop with a linear regression exercise and you will know how to adapt to your class or lab settings.

The CodeBMB team consists of four faculty members with a variety of coding and instructional skills, growing expertise in educational research and a deep commitment to making coding accessible to everyone in the life sciences.

Chris Berndsen, James Madison University
Paul Craig, RIT
Mike Foster, Penn State
Wally Novak, Wabash College

Course Objectives and Intended Audiences

After watching the videos in this course, you will be able to:

Understand how coding can contribute to student learning
Recognize and write basic Python scripts
Open and modify existing Colab notebooks to use in their courses

This course is intended for:

Professional scientists in the biosciences from academia and industry starting to code
Post-docs and graduate students who want to bring coding into their learning environments
Instructors involved in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education