Visiting prof teaches scientific programming to SU grad students, faculty
Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel, visiting professor at the Biology Department, College of Arts and Sciences of Silliman University (Photo from https://pacificklaus.com/)
Austrian biologist Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel, a visiting professor at the Biology Department, College of Arts and Sciences of Silliman University (SU), taught SU faculty and graduate students how to manage and analyze scientific data using R, a programming language in a course held April 1-5 at the Multipurpose Room.
Participants at work at the Multipurpose Room.
The course was titled “Scientific data management and analysis using the R programming language.” It was attended by graduate students and faculty of the Biology Department, Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences, and College of Business Administration. It taught participants how to group and sort the data they acquired during their scientific studies, run statistical tests on the data, and plot them in a variety of ways. The course also introduced them to the connection of R to scientific databases such as FishBase, a global species database of fish species. Due to its user-friendly nature and its useful built-in functions, R is a popular software tool in many fields of biology.
The course was organized by Prof. Nadia P. Abesamis and Dr. Robert S. Guino-o II of the Biology Department.
Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel (7th from left) with participating faculty and students of the Biology Department, IEMS, and CBA.
Dr. Stiefel, who moved to the Philippines in 2014, is also a visiting professor at the Marine Science Institute of the University of the Philippines Diliman. He did his doctoral work at the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Aside from being an independent scientist, photographer, and scuba instructor, Stiefel also is a science author, having written two books: The Camera and the Brain: What Visual Neuroscience Can Teach the Photographer and Gehirn Extrem (German for “Extreme Brain”), which explains brain function during vision and while exposed to extreme situations like deep scuba dives.
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Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel, visiting professor at the Biology Department, College of Arts and Sciences of Silliman University (Photo from https://pacificklaus.com/)
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Participants at work at the Multipurpose Room.
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Dr. Klaus M. Stiefel (7th from left) with participating faculty and students of the Biology Department, IEMS, and CBA.
