The following online training sessions may be of interest to faculty and students, and are free of charge. 

Registration for everything except the Digital Research Summer School is through our training portal — https://www.acenet.training/courses  

The summer school has its own link, with registration active as of 11 May at 2:00 pm Atlantic / 2:30 pm NL —  https://training.computeontario.ca/coss2026.php

Introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC)

12 May, 1200-1330hrs Atlantic / 1230-1400hrs NL (online)

What is High Performance Computing (HPC) and what can it do for me? How can ACENET help? Used by researchers across many disciplines to tackle analyses too large or complex for a desktop, or to achieve improved efficiency over a desktop, this session takes participants through the preliminary stages of learning about high performance computing (HPC) and computing clusters, and how to get started with this type of computing. It then reviews software packages available for applications, data analysis, software development and compiling code. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of parallel computing to achieve much faster results in analysis. This session is designed for those with no prior experience in HPC, and are looking for an introduction and overview.  

Introduction to the Linux Command Line

13 May, 1200-1330hrs Atlantic / 1230-1400hrs NL (online)

Linux is the terminal interface used to enable you to use the ACENET and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC) HPC clusters from your desktop. It's the tool you need to get your data on the clusters, run your programs, and get your data back. In this session, learn how to get started with Linux, how to create and navigate directories for your data, load files, manage your storage, run programs on the computing clusters, and set file permissions. This core session is designed to help new users at ACENET and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada with no prior experience in working with a terminal interface get up and running. No prior programming experience is necessary.

Introduction to Shell Scripting

14 May, 1200-1330hrs Atlantic / 1230-1400hrs NL (online)

Shell scripting helps you save time, automate file management tasks, and better use the power of Linux. You’ll learn how to use the command line to carry out repetitive tasks, extract information from files quickly, combine commands in powerful ways, learn about job scripts, shell variables and looping commands, and capture a workflow so you can re-use it easily. Save time, reduce errors, and use Linux more effectively. This workshop is designed for either new High Performance Computing (HPC) users familiar with working in a Linux environment, or for experienced users seeking to get more out of shell scripting.  

Job Scheduling with Slurm

15 May, 1200-1330hrs Atlantic | 1230-1400hrs NL (online)

The national systems use a job scheduler called “Slurm”. In this session you will learn how Slurm works and how it allocates jobs, helping you to: minimize wait time by framing reasonable requests; ask for only the resources you need to improve efficiency; increase throughput; run more jobs simultaneously; and troubleshoot and address crashes. This workshop is designed for new HPC users familiar with Linux and Shell Scripting, or for experienced users transitioning to Slurm or seeking to improve efficiency with the scheduler. Participants should have a Digital Research Alliance of Canada account.

Using R on High Performance Computing Clusters

19 May, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic | 1330-1630 NL (online)

This hands-on beginner series covers the fundamentals needed for using R and RStudio on the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. R allows you to analyze data in a reproducible, script-based way, so you and others can efficiently rerun and check your work. It’s powerful for importing, cleaning, analyzing, and visualizing data of any size, and is free, open-source, and widely used in research workflows. The first session introduces the Unix shell, a powerful tool for automating tasks and building HPC-based workflows. In the second session, participants will learn the basics of coding in R, and become familiar with using RStudio. This includes creating objects, importing and working with data, using the basic libraries, and performing simple operations. In the final session, we will log into a cluster, load R and download some packages, and then use RStudio to do some model testing and visualization. Afterwards, we will submit our full script as a batch job to the cluster. While the examples and data used will be aimed at the Humanities and Social Sciences community, the session is open to anyone and everyone interested in learning about R. No previous experience with digital tools or programming is required for this workshop.

Molecular Dynamics

2, 4, 9, 11 June, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL (online)

This beginner-to-intermediate, hands-on workshop is designed for participants with no prior experience in Molecular Dynamics tools. Participants will learn to use AMBER and NAMD for preparing and running biomolecular simulations, VMD for trajectory visualization and PDB manipulation, and Python (PYTRAJ) for analyzing and plotting simulation data within Jupyter notebooks.The four sessions consist of: Practical considerations for Molecular Dynamics; Visualizing Structures with VMD; Molecular Dynamics with AMBER and NAMD; and, Analyzing Molecular Dynamics Data with PYTRAJ. We will be using the online programming environment Jupyter for our teaching. This workshop is intended for researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in fields such as chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, materials science, and related disciplines who are interested in using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations in their work.

2026 Digital Research Summer School

1-19 June (online)

Choose from over 40 free courses covering a wide range of topics, including AI, machine learning, bioinformatics, GPU programming, advanced research computing basics, high performance computing tools, programming languages, neuroanalytics, visualization, research data management, and more…. The website will be available soon with the list of courses and schedule. Registration opens May 11th at 2:00pm Atlantic, 2:30pm NL time here: https://training.computeontario.ca/coss2026.php  Once open, register quickly, as some courses we expect to be in high demand have limited seats!