Intro to R for biologists

Jessica Chung (Melbourne Bioinformatics, The University of Melbourne)

This workshop has been developed collaboratively by training specialists at Peter MacCallum Cancer Center and Melbourne Bioinformatics and is freely available at this link.

This introduction to R and RStudio will provide beginners with experience with loading, manipulating and visualising biological data using the tidyverse collection of R packages. The example data used is publicly available RNA-seq data, therefore attendees will gain experience in the structure and appearance of RNA-seq data.

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Load tabular data into R
• Apply tidyverse functions to manipulate data in R
• Produce simple plots such boxplots using ggplot
• Understand and apply data faceting in ggplot
• Modify the aesthetics of a ggplot plot.

This Free workshop is available to staff and students at The University of Melbourne and its affiliated institutes.

You must register for this event using an affiliated institutional email address or your registration may be cancelled.

This is an in person hands-on workshop and attendees must use their own computer with RStudio and R installed (installation instructions available at this link). You may need to contact your own IT support for assistance during the installation process and to ensure that you have full permissions to R directories.

Therefore, we advise you to begin installation when registering for the workshop, to allow sufficient time to trouble shoot issues with your own IT support such as permissions and sufficient space for installation.

What you need:

• A charged laptop (laptop chargers also recommended)
• Web browser (Firefox or Chrome recommended)
• R (>= version 3.5) and RStudio installed on your laptop
• access to the Uniwireless or Eduroam internet/wifi.

If you require any further information, or have any access requirements in order to participate in this workshop, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss your requirements:

We recommend that following our eventbrite page if you wish to be alerted when we release new workshops for registrations. If you require any further information, please contact Melbourne Bioinformatics at: YmlvaW5mb3JtYXRpY3MtdHJhaW5pbmcgfCB1bmltZWxiICEgZWR1ICEgYXU=

Starting 1 August 2025, participants who miss two or more workshops without proper notice (less than 48 hours or attending under 50%) within 12 months will be placed on a 6-month waitlist for full workshops. To avoid being marked as a no-show, cancellations must be made at least 24 hours in advance, with exceptions allowed for emergencies.Please read the full policy here: https://mbite.org/guides/policy/

Also check out other Workshops in Melbourne.