Education

Learning Resources

Where to start with data science in pharma. A collection of helpful resources and courses.

Courses at KU & SDU

Start with a course.

Instructor-led courses in pharmaceutical data science at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark. Several are open to PhD students and external participants.

Where to begin

New to data science? Two steps to get going.

Pick the language your group already uses — that's the only decision you need to make right now.

Find more

External Courses

Courses hand-picked by CPDSE members working in these fields. Search, or narrow by topic, language and level. Mostly free; options that carry a certificate are marked.

Topic
Lang

FreeCertificatePythonBeginner

Python for Everybody

University of Michigan · Charles Severance

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

A Whirlwind Tour of Python

Jake VanderPlas

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner → Advanced

Real Python (selected free tutorials)

Real Python

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

R for Data Science (2nd ed.)

Hadley Wickham, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel & Garrett Grolemund

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

swirl — Learn R, in R

swirlstats

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRAll

Posit (RStudio) Cheatsheets & Recipes

Posit

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
PaidCertificateRBeginner → Intermediate

Data Science Specialization

Johns Hopkins · Coursera

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePythonIntermediate

Applied Data Science with Python Specialization

University of Michigan · Coursera

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

futurecoder

futurecoder.io

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

Think Python

Allen B. Downey

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

Programming with Python (Software Carpentry)

The Carpentries

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner → Intermediate

Python for Data Analysis (3rd ed.)

Wes McKinney

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

Python Beginner's Guide

Python Software Foundation

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

W3Schools Python Tutorial

W3Schools

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeMixedBeginner

freeCodeCamp

freeCodeCamp

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

fasteR — Fast Lane to Learning R

Norm Matloff

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

Hands-On Programming with R

Garrett Grolemund

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

R-Ladies Sydney — Basic Basics

R-Ladies Sydney

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

W3Schools R Tutorial

W3Schools

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner → Intermediate

An Introduction to R

R Core Team

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRIntermediate

data.table — Introduction

data.table project

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRAdvanced

Advanced R

Hadley Wickham

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
PaidRBeginner → Advanced

DataCamp — R courses

DataCamp

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner

R4PhD — Introduction to R and the tidyverse

University of Southern Denmark · O'Neill & Harsted

Programming foundationsOpen ↗
FreeTheoryBeginner → Intermediate

StatQuest with Josh Starmer

Josh Starmer · YouTube

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeBothIntermediate

Introduction to Statistical Learning (ISLR)

James, Witten, Hastie, Tibshirani

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeRIntermediate

Statistical Rethinking

Richard McElreath

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeRIntermediate

Modern Statistics with R

Måns Thulin

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

3Blue1Brown — Essence of Linear Algebra / Calculus / Probability

Grant Sanderson · YouTube

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeCertificatePythonIntermediate → Advanced

MITx MicroMasters in Statistics & Data Science

MIT · edX

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeCertificateBothIntermediate

Statistical Learning with R / Python

Stanford Online · Hastie & Tibshirani

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePython + theoryIntermediate

Mathematics for Machine Learning Specialization

Imperial College London · Coursera

Statistics & data analysisOpen ↗
FreeGitBeginner → Advanced

Pro Git

Scott Chacon & Ben Straub

Reproducibility & workflowOpen ↗
FreeGitBeginner → Intermediate

GitHub Skills

GitHub

Reproducibility & workflowOpen ↗
FreeGitBeginner

Happy Git and GitHub for the useR

Jenny Bryan, the STAT 545 TAs, Jim Hester

Reproducibility & workflowOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

The Turing Way

The Turing Way community

Reproducibility & workflowOpen ↗
FreeMixedBeginner

Software & Data Carpentry lessons

The Carpentries

Reproducibility & workflowOpen ↗
FreeGalaxy / point-and-clickBeginner → Advanced

Galaxy Training Network

Galaxy Project · GTN

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
FreeRIntermediate

Bioconductor — Course Materials

Bioconductor

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner → Advanced

Rosalind — Bioinformatics problems

Rosalind

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner → Intermediate

Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook

Biopython

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePython + Galaxy + RIntermediate

Genomic Data Science Specialization

Johns Hopkins · Coursera

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
FreeMixedAll

National Health Data Science Sandbox

HeaDS · University of Copenhagen

Bioinformatics & GalaxyOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate

RDKit Cookbook

RDKit

Cheminformatics & drug discoveryOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate

TeachOpenCADD

Volkamer Lab

Cheminformatics & drug discoveryOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate → Advanced

DeepChem Tutorials

DeepChem

Cheminformatics & drug discoveryOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate

Practical Deep Learning for Coders

fast.ai · Jeremy Howard, Rachel Thomas

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate

Hugging Face NLP / LLM Course

Hugging Face

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreePythonIntermediate

Made With ML

Goku Mohandas

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePythonBeginner → Intermediate

Machine Learning Specialization

DeepLearning.AI · Stanford · Coursera

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePythonIntermediate

AI for Medicine Specialization

DeepLearning.AI · Coursera

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreeCertificateRBeginner → Intermediate

HarvardX Data Science Professional Certificate

Harvard · edX (Rafael Irizarry)

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
PaidCertificatePythonIntermediate

AI in Healthcare Specialization

Stanford · Coursera

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreeCertificatePythonBeginner → Intermediate

Microsoft Learn — Machine Learning paths

Microsoft Learn

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner

Kaggle Learn

Kaggle (Google)

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreeMixedAll

OpenML — open ML data + benchmarks

OpenML

Machine learning & AI for healthcareOpen ↗
FreeRIntermediate

mrgsolve — User Guide & Vignettes

Metrum Research Group

Pharmacometrics & PKPDOpen ↗
FreeNONMEMIntermediate → Advanced

Open pharmacometrics teaching materials (Bauer / Mould lectures, NMUsersGroup archives)

Various (NONMEM/PsN/community)

Pharmacometrics & PKPDOpen ↗
PaidNONMEMIntermediate → Advanced

UCT Pharmacometrics training (PMX Africa)

University of Cape Town · PMX Africa

Pharmacometrics & PKPDOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

Fundamentals of Data Visualization

Claus O. Wilke

Data visualisationOpen ↗
FreeRBeginner → Intermediate

ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (3rd ed.)

Hadley Wickham, Danielle Navarro, Thomas Lin Pedersen

Data visualisationOpen ↗
FreePythonBeginner → Intermediate

Python Data Science Handbook

Jake VanderPlas

Data visualisationOpen ↗
FreeOtherAll

Datawrapper Academy

Datawrapper

Data visualisationOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

FDA — Real-World Evidence Program

U.S. Food & Drug Administration

Regulatory, ethics & data governanceOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

EMA — Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

European Medicines Agency

Regulatory, ethics & data governanceOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

FAIRsharing — Standards, Databases, Policies

FAIRsharing.org

Regulatory, ethics & data governanceOpen ↗
FreeTheoryAll

Data protection & information privacy (UCPH)

University of Copenhagen

Regulatory, ethics & data governanceOpen ↗

Hand-curated and last reviewed 2026-05-08. These are starting points the centre believes in — quality is subjective. Spot a broken link or a better resource? Open an issue or pull request on the website repo.