Research Software Engineers Day - Coding with AI
Practical information:
Want to register?
- Prerequisites: experience in programming
- Price: €85-€200
Georganiseerd door:
Leertraject
The aim of the Belgium Research Software Engineers Day is to foster a community of research software developers and to collectively improve the standard of software used for scientific research.
On 6 December you will have the opportunity to gather together with other research software engineers to share your vast collective experience. Join the community for an exciting day of talks and workshops to discuss the challenges you face and the bugs you chase!
Preceding the Research Software Engineers Day, a hands-on workshop will take place on 5 December. These workshops dive into the world of AI. You can choose to dive into how to best use genAI for coding or how to use local LLMs to run your analysis in the HPC.
Workshops (Thursday 5 December)
Using Large Language Models locally (09:30-17:00)
Although most of us use Large Language Models via a web interface, this is not always the ideal scenario. GDPR or intellectual property considerations may prohibit exposing data or even queries to providers of such services. A model may have to be fine-tuned to increase the quality for certain applications. In such circumstances, you may want to deploy an LLM locally, and this training will show you how to do that and give some illustrations of applications you can implement.
Target audience
Anyone curious about how to build local applications of LLMs.
Objectives:
When you follow this training you will be able to:
- install and run LLMs on local hardware;
- use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to chat with your own documents/data;
- fine-tune an LLM to better answer your questions;
- optimize an LLM to reduce requirements for inference.
Required skills:
Familiarity with Python will be required, experience using the Bash command line will help.
Trainers
Getting the Most Out of AI Coding Assistants (13:00-17:30)
AI tools are changing the way software developers work, but using these assistants effectively can be challenging. This workshop will help you to unlock the full potential of AI in your development workflow.
Whether you're new to these tools or have been using them for a while, join us to explore the wide range of AI coding assistants available, discuss best practices for using them in your projects, and discover when and how to use them to maximize your productivity. You will not need any more than a basic understanding of programming. Plus, if you're already comfortable with AI tools, this is a great opportunity to share your experiences and insights with others!
Target audience
Any level with an interest in AI coding assistants. A basic level of programming is useful.
Objectives
Discover what tools are available and how to integrate them into a development workflow. When and how to get the best use of these tools.
Trainers
- James Collier - VIB Technologies, BE
- Marine Guyot - CodingResearcher, FR
RSE Day (Friday 6 December)
08:30-09:15 Registration & Welcome coffee
09:15-12:15 Session1
- 09:15-09:45 Simon Hettrick, Software Sustainability Institute, UK
- 09:15-10:15 Enhancing research efficiency with modular software solutions Marine Guyot, CodingResearcher, FR
- 10:15-10:45 Coffee/Tea break
- 10:45-11:15 Presenter TBA (Selected from abstracts)
- 11:15-11:45 Presenter TBA (Selected from abstracts)
- 11:45-12:15 Presenter TBA
12:15-13:15 Lunch break
13:15-15:15 BoF session
Informal discussion based on a shared interest and without any fixed agenda
15:15-17:00 Session 2
- 15:15-15:45 Lightning talks (Selected from abstracts)
- 15:45-16:15 Jochem Claes, Education & Research Lead, Microsoft Belux, BE
- 16:15-17:00 AI-Coding panel discussion
- Marine Guyot, CodingResearcher, FR
- Simon Hettrick, Software Sustainability Institute, UK
- Jochem Claes, Education & Research Lead, Microsoft Belux, BE
17:00-18:00 Reception
Teachers / speakers
Jochem Claes
Jochem Claes holds a degree in Aerospace Engineering with a specialization in Space Exploration from the University of Delft (the Netherlands). After having advised manufacturing and software engineering companies on their data, AI and sustainability opportunities he recently started in the role of Education & Research Lead for Belgium and Luxembourg. This role allows him to advise research institutions on how to digitally transform and work with researchers on how to leverage public cloud to accelerate the pace of innovation.
Simon Hettrick
Professor Simon Hettrick is Director of Strategy at the Software Sustainability Institute and a Director of the Southampton Research Software Group.
Simon is a passionate advocate for Research Software Engineers. He orchestrated a campaign to gain recognition for this community, which has grown from a handful of people in 2013 to an international community numbering in the tens of thousands. He was the founding chair of the UK's Association of Research Software Engineers and a founding Trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering and its Treasurer. He was treasurer of the RSE conference 2016-2019.
Simon is the Chair of the Hidden REF: a national campaign that looks to recognises all research outputs and every role that makes research possible. In this role, Simon campaigns for a broader interpretation of how people can contribute to the conduct of research. The Hidden REF campaign takes some credit for the inclusion of all roles, including non-academic roles, in the 2029 REF.
Simon's research focuses on the use of software in the research community with the aim of understanding practices and demographics. In this role, he conducted the first study of software reliance in academia.
Marine Guyot
Embedded system engineer in the automotive industry by training, I have always aimed to work in research. After a detour in the US and attempting to work in the industry, I refocused on my primary objective and moved to Belgium to pursue a career as a research software engineer in bioscience.
I spent three years working for a neuroscience lab that is part of NERF. During this time, I gained a basic understanding of the brain but, more importantly, valuable insights into lab development processes, the goals of research software, and the challenges involved in achieving these goals.
With this experience, I founded my own freelance company to help various laboratories improve the quality of their software production. For the past year, I have been working with labs and startups in Belgium, France, and Switzerland across different scientific domains, including neuroscience, MRI segmentation, and cell sequencing.
Claire Wyatt
Claire is the Community Manager for Research Software Engineering and is working to create a community for anyone whose role involves Research Software Engineering at JSC and FZJ. She works within the Preparatory Study of the Helmholtz Platform for Research Software Engineering (HiRSE_PS) and the Open Science 4 FZJ initiative. If you're interested in Research Software Engineering or think that you might be an Research Software Engineer (without the job title), check out the internal RSE Portal.
For the last six years, Claire was the RSE Community Manager in the UK at the Software Sustainability Institute, based at the University of Southampton. In that time, she was part of the core team that grew the community to over 4000 on Slack, over 600 members of the Society and an annual conference of 350 delegates with sponsorship from companies like Microsoft Research, IBM, AWS, Oracle and Google. The community was both online and in person with a range of networks and events for different career levels. Claire was also a founding trustee of the Society of Research Software Engineering (a charity) which was created in 2019 and a member of the UK RSE Association.
Geert Jan Bex
- Kennisrepresentatie en redenering
- Machine learning en besluitvorming
- Neurale, evolutionaire en fuzzy computation
- Statistische fysica
- Ontwikkeling van bio-informatica software, tools en databases
- High performance computing
James Collier
Bioinformatics tool developer at VIB
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