The eScience Institute offers the annual Winter School to students and lecturers interested in developing basic skills and knowledge of the tools used in data science. Gaining literacy in topics such as Python, R, Jupyter, and reproducible environments can be beneficial beyond STEM, including areas like global or public health, public policy, social sciences, social work, international relations, and business management.
There are no prerequisites to take this course and there is no credit offered. Only UW faculty, staff, students (undergraduates and gradaduates) from all three campuses are welcome to apply.
The deadline to apply is February 4th, 2026
Winter School 2026 classes will be held via ZOOM
Sessions will be on Wednesdays afternoons from 14:00 to 17:00 The dates will be February: 11,18, 25 / March: 4.
Session 1: February 11th, 2pm
Data Science Languages-Python and R: This class will give an overview of Python and R simple data structures in a comparative way (vectors, lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets, data frames). This first session will focus on differences between these languages, and will help students with related procedures such as installation and environments, as well as user interfaces.
Session 2: February 18th, 2pm
Data Pre Processing in Python: This class will give an overview of Python capabilities for different data management processes (collection, cleaning, formatting, merging, aggregating,and exporting).
Session 3: February 25th, 2pm
The Basics of Data Visualization in R : This class will introduce students to R programming language. It will focus on its capabilities for data visualization using ggplot.
Session 4: March 4th, 2pm
Publishing Reproducible Research : This last class will organize the work done in the previous session. It will teach students how to combine R and tools like Markdown (for document preparation), Github (for organizing data repositories), Zotero (to manage references), and Flexdasboards.
About the Director of the Winter School
Professor Jose Manuel Magallanes, PhD, has served as a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute since 2015. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance and the Department of Sociology at the University of Washington from 2015 to 2025.
He is currently a Full Professor of Political Science and Government in the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and the Director of the Institute for Social Analytics and Strategic Intelligence (PULSO-PUCP). Additionally, he is a Lecturer in the Master’s Program in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science at UMass Amherst and a Part-Time Professor in the Department of Juridical and Political Sciences at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at Duke University, Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), and Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).
Professor Magallanes holds a PhD in Computational Social Science from George Mason University. His academic credentials also include a PhD in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM), an M.A. in Political Science from PUCP, and a BSc in Computer Science from UNMSM
Acknowledgment Section
The Winter School is offered free of charge thanks to the support of the eScience Institute and its funding partners. Professor Magallanes acknowledges that the material was developed thanks to his visiting appointments at the UW’s eScience Institute, the Department of Sociology at UW, and the Evans School at UW, as well as the work he conducts at PULSO PUCP