Seminars

Led by CS50’s own staff, seminars are an opportunity to dive more deeply into a topic of interest!

Data Science and Machine Learning in Python

With Chris Perez ‘26

2023 Archive

Flying the Nest: Setting Up Your Local Development Environment

With Andrew Holmes ‘24

In this short seminar, I’ll walk you through the process of flying the Codespaces nest and setting up your laptop for local development. I will focus on setting up tools that we’ve used in CS50, such as VSCode, Python and Git (behind the scenes!). Towards the end, I’ll also briefly talk about some other tools you may want to look into yourself that I can’t cover in detail here, and give some general guidance for next steps!

How To Use Git and GitHub

With Sein Yun ‘26 and Mohamed Zidan Cassim ‘26

The differences between Git and GitHub, command line usage, how to clone a repository for working on projects, and how to collaborate on code using push/pull/merge.

2022 Archive

Python for Data Science

With Amulya Garimella ’25

Learn the basics of data science, the typical workflows data scientists use, and see examples of some relevant packages and techniques (including pandas, seaborn, matplotlib, and statistics packages!).

Introduction to Node.js: Using Server-Side JavaScript

With Nathalie Acosta ’25

Interested in the world of JavaScript? Join us to learn how you can use JavaScript to power your applications!

Introduction to iOS Development

With Kamryn Ohly ’25

Interested in getting started with mobile app and iOS development? Have access to an Apple computer? If so, join our seminar on an introduction to Xcode and the Swift programming language. In this seminar, we will be going over the basics of Xcode and how to implement Swift to create iOS apps you can simulate directly on your phone! We will be learning the basics of Swift (loops, functions, dictionaries/arrays, classes & objects) and building a short Buzzfeed style quiz game using Xcode storyboards. Once we understand the basics of iOS development with Xcode, we will also briefly talk about (and provide external tutorials + examples) on how to extend this introductory knowledge to implementing databases, APIs, using Apple’s AR, and how to launch your App for beta testing and to the App Store!

Getting Started with AI for Medical Imaging: Exploring CXR Foundation from Google Health AI

with Andrew Sellergren ’08

Artificial intelligence (AI) for computer vision is growing in both popularity and usefulness on a daily basis. In fields like healthcare, AI for medical imaging is poised to save millions of lives over the next few decades. But it’s still hard to know how to get started with it, particularly if you don’t have access to large computational resources or datasets. Recently, Google Health AI published research and released a tool called CXR Foundation that enable you to get started with creating machine learning models for disease detection on chest x-rays (CXRs), of which there are over a billion taken every year. With CXR Foundation, we showed that it’s possible to train models that can diagnose tuberculosis or predict the severity of COVID-19 using only a few hundred images. How does CXR Foundation work? In this tech talk, we’ll explain the research we did to create the model and walk through code to train your own!

About Andrew
I’m a software engineer at Google, but I studied chemistry in college. I joined Google as an analyst in 2010 and transferred into software engineering in 2014. My CS journey started like many of yours, taking CS50! I took CS50 my senior year, the first year that David taught it (though neither of us will admit when that was). It was CS50 that gave me the confidence and skills to learn any new CS concept that I have ever wanted, including ML which I began learning 3 years ago.

2021 Archive

Foldable/Dual-Screen Form Factors

Thinking about CS50 final project ideas, come learn about foldable mobile devices from the developers at Microsoft. Foldable mobile devices facilitate unique user experiences, especially around multitasking and pen input. Learn about the dual-screen Surface Duo 2 and how to build web apps that can adapt to two screens using web standard CSS and JavaScript. You can build and test fold-aware designs on the desktop, and optionally test with an Android emulator. You can even ship progressive web apps (PWAs) via Google Play, like any other Android app.

Collaboration and Version Control with Git

Have you wondered how you might work with your final project team without all sitting at the same device and taking turns typing code? Have you ever created a Backup_4.zip as you worked on a problem set to ensure you have a working version to revert to if you messed things up? Ever landed on a GitHub repository and had no idea how to download the files? Join us to learn how the pros handle these situations using an incredibly powerful command-line tool called Git!

Developing Your Project Locally with VS Code

Join us to learn how use VS Code locally (and offline!) on your own computer, unlocking new development possibilities! We’ll walk you through how to create your own development environment with Python, SQLite, and more, so that you can work with some of the most common technologies used in CS50 final projects.

Mac

Windows

Making Small-Scale 2D Games with LÖVE 2D and Lua

Have you ever wanted to know how to create 2D games for profit or pleasure? In this one-hour session, you will learn (a) how to design a small-scope game that can be created within fourteen days, (b) how to get started using the LÖVE 2D framework to create your 2D game, and (c) how to avoid the three landmines of small-scope game design. For less comfortable and more comfortable programmers alike, this session will help you see the overarching steps to creating your 2d game.

React Native for iOS App Development

What do apps like Facebook, Instagram, Discord, and Skype have in common? They were all developed with React Native! If you’re interested in making an iOS app for your final project, this is a seminar you won’t want to miss. HSA DEV Managing Director Paul Song and HSA DEV Software Engineer Catherine Deskur will introduce you to the basics of creating, styling, and debugging a React Native iOS app.

Introduction to Machine Learning

Interested in applying machine learning in your CS50 Final Project? We are hosting a seminar to give a brief overview of machine learning, implementations of machine learning models in Python, and finding good datasets for your ML model! Look forward to seeing you in our seminar soon!