After creating a custom Matlab kernel, you'll see the option for a `Matlab` kernel in the "New" drop down when starting a new notebook. The Matlab engine set up here will reference the version of Matlab used during the `build` process. If you'd like to upgrade to a newer version, you'll need to repeat building the engine and moving that into the `site-packages` directory as above.

You can install a Matlab kernel by running the following at the command line:

# The Matlab engine supports recent python 2 and 3. Here I will use a known working version--python 3.6.4

/usr/apps/python-3.6.4/bin/virtualenv --system-site-packages my_personal_env

source my_personal_env/bin/activate

python3 -m pip install jupyter

python3 -m pip install matlab_kernel

 

# build the matlab engine

cd /collab/usr/gapps/estk/matlab-2018b/extern/engines/python

python3 setup.py build -b /usr/workspace/$USER #writes matlab engine to /usr/workspace/$USER/lib/matlab

# go home...

cd

mv /usr/workspace/$USER/lib/matlab $HOME/my_personal_env/lib/python3.6/site-packages/matlab # you may want to remove the now-empty /lib dir

python3 -m matlab_kernel install --prefix=$HOME/.local/