Events

This session introduces Generative AI Studio and Google Gemini, a product on Vertex AI, that helps you prototype and customize generative AI models so you can use their capabilities in your applications. In this course, you learn what Generative AI Studio is, its features and options, and how to use it by walking through demos of the product.

Presented by Pratap Ramamurthy

Learn and develop techniques for professional collaborative work using the Git Flow workflow. In this hands-on workshop, we will cover working with remote repositories on GitHub (https://github.com) to push and pull code changes, submit pull requests, and merge branches for your projects using GitHub and the command line.

Attendees should have experience creating repositories, making commits, and using GitHub prior to attending this workshop. The entry-level Git workshop, "Version Control with Git – Basic", will be held prior to the intermediate workshop during this semester. Check the Research Cyberinfrastructure events page (https://rci.research.ucf.edu/events/) for availability of the basic course.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer, and have Git (https://git-scm.com/downloads) installed prior to the start of the session. If you will be attending using a UCF-managed computer, you may not have permissions to install the software yourself; please reach out to your IT team for assistance installing Git well in advance of the event, as the presenter will be unable to assist in installation or troubleshooting before or during the event.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by Mark Durbin

This workshop is designed to equip you with the core fundamentals for programming in Python. Throughout this course, you will explore the core concepts of Python programming, focusing on variables, lists, loops, and conditional statements.

We'll begin by demystifying the concept of variables, teaching you how to store and manipulate data effectively. From there, we'll delve into lists, uncovering how to organize and manipulate collections of data. As you progress, you'll master the art of control flow with loops and conditional statements. Learn how to automate repetitive tasks using loops and make your programs dynamically responsive with conditional statements.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by John Aedo, Ph.D.

In this workshop, we'll focus on three key pillars of Python development: error handling, user-defined functions, and database programming.

Firstly, we'll equip you with the tools to build robust and resilient code through comprehensive error handling techniques. Learn how to anticipate and gracefully manage errors, ensuring your programs not only function smoothly but also remain reliable in the face of unexpected challenges.

Next, we'll explore the power of user-defined functions, enabling you to create modular and reusable code. Dive into advanced function design, parameter handling, and return statements, empowering you to write efficient and maintainable programs.

Lastly, database programming will teach you how to interact with databases using Python. Learn to connect, query, and manipulate databases seamlessly, gaining a valuable skill set for real-world applications.

By the end of this session, you'll possess a deeper understanding of Python's capabilities, enabling you to write more sophisticated, error-resistant, and scalable programs.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by John Aedo, Ph.D.

Whether you're new to working with LaTeX, Overleaf or both; or just want an insight into the best way to work with your projects in Overleaf, join us for this 60 minute webinar, where we'll cover:

- Overleaf and LaTeX Basics
- Creating a new project
- Using the Visual Editor
- Editing your project
- Sharing your project
- Adding Images and Tables
- Uploading a bibliography
- Fixing errors
- Submitting your project to a journal
- Questions & Answers

To participate in the hands-on section of the event, please join the meeting from a laptop or personal computer with a reliable internet connection.

Presented by Lee Spence

Discover How Google Generative AI Can:
Accelerate Discovery: Uncover patterns and correlations in your data that would take years to find manually.
Scale Innovation: Generate novel hypotheses, design innovative experiments, and explore new research avenues.
Enhance Collaboration: Streamline literature reviews, co-author papers, and communicate findings more effectively.
Secure Funding: Craft compelling grant proposals and showcase the impact of your research with data-driven visualizations.


Session Will Cover The Following Topics:
Introduction to Google Cloud
10x Thinking with Google! Google Culture Crash Course
Alphabet, Inc. Key Advantages, Research and Tools Available
The Types of Solutions Google Provides to R1 Research Institutions
Open Discussion
Tell Google Your Superpower!
Let’s Focus on You! Skill Sets, Experience, and Strategic Imperatives
Lab One (1): Google BigQuery ML democratizes ML by letting users create, train, evaluate, and predict with ML models using existing SQL tools and skills.
Overview of Google’s Data Dominance. Native Data Catalog in BigQuery, Data Assets and Models such as Alphafold from Deepmind, more.
You will learn what makes a good model by cleaning, governing, and extracting value from Enterprise Data to build trustworthy AI.
Lab Two (2): Google's Vertex AI Platform
AutoML: train tabular, image, text, or video data without code
Governance and Interoperability: Control over the end to end training process, use your preferred ML framework, write your own training code, and choose your own hyperparameters
Google Cloud Model Garden: Discover, test, customize, and deploy Google LLM's, APIs, and select open-source (OSS) models and assets.
Generative AI: access to 150+ models from multiple companies and across multiple modalities (text, code, images, speech). Tune Google's LLMs to meet your needs, and deploy AI-apps
Solutions Showcase:
Art of the Possible Demos from Google!

Challenges and Considerations:
While the potential of generative AI in research is immense, it's important to be aware of ethical considerations, potential biases in data, and the need for human oversight to ensure the responsible and effective use of these powerful tools.

Who Should Attend:
Researchers, scientists, data analysts, and anyone interested in leveraging cutting-edge AI to advance their work.

Limited Seats Available!
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Google experts, network with fellow researchers, and see firsthand how generative AI is revolutionizing research across disciplines.

Presented by Pratap Ramamurthy

LaTeX is a software for document preparation and is used frequently in academic and research communities for scientific writing e.g., journals, theses, presentations, etc. This is a hands-on workshop that will cover basic material suitable for audience that have little or no prior experience with LaTeX.

The workshop will use Overleaf which is a freely available online LaTeX editor. Participants are expected to have an account with Overleaf before the workshop. If you do not have an account with Overleaf, then please create one through this link - https://www.overleaf.com/register.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by Fahad Khan, Ph.D.

Structured Query Language (SQL) is used for data retrieval, searching, modification, and reporting by relational database systems. This workshop is an introductory level course aimed at researchers and students new to databases. You will learn how to explore data stored in databases like Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, mySQL, Oracle, and SQLite using SQL. You will gain hands-on experience querying, sorting, formatting, and transforming data. You also will be introduced to various tools such as the Python and R programming languages for accessing and querying databases.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by John Aedo, Ph.D.

This hands-on training session will include: Best practices in creating clusters in minutes with the HPC toolkit, how run your most intensive workloads on the latest CPUs, GPUs, and high-performance storage. Help managing costs as you scale with budgets and committed use discounts. Save up to 91% with Spot VMs for flexible workloads.

Presented by Pratap Ramamurthy

In this workshop, learn good practices for communicating numerical results through LaTeX. Attendees will become familiar with popular LaTeX packages for writing algorithms/pseudocode, presenting and formatting source code, organizing and managing their plots, and presenting numerical results in a table alongside.

While attendees are expected to have a working knowledge of LaTeX, all materials will be provided through Overleaf, a free-to-use LaTeX editor. Participants have the option to either log in to Overleaf and follow along or observe through Zoom. Everyone will be given a copy of the LaTeX files in advance.

If you do not have an account already, you may create one via https://www.overleaf.com/register.

Presented by Ben Keene

Join Ben Keene and Nandan Tandon of the Office of Research's Cyberinfrastructure Facilitation team as they discuss how the National Science Foundation's ACCESS program can provide you with free computational resources for your research. NSF has granted $52 million over five years to advanced computational resource providers, and has developed an ecosystem to assist and accelerate computational research. Watch this webinar to learn more about the ACCESS ecosystem, what resources they provide, and how their team can assist in onboarding UCF researchers to ACCESS resources.

Presented by Ben Keene, Nandan Tandon, Ph.D.

The "shell" in Unix is a generic term for the program that provides the basic user interface to the system. Typically, this would be a command line interface, but might also include a graphical interface (e.g., "gnome shell"). This workshop will cover commands common to most variations of Unix and Unix command line interface shells. The second hour of this workshop will explore shell commands and solutions inspired by participant questions and problems. It is assumed you are familiar with basic shell concepts.

Presented by Steven Dick

Data and statistics play an important role in conducting research, yet understanding how to find, analyze, and manage data can be complicated. If you are interested in developing data skills, this session on finding data sources will provide an overview of introductory information to aid you on your path to being a data expert.

The workshop will introduce the basic concepts of data and examples of how it is used in supporting research, including copyright concerns to be aware of. Resources that are applicable in a variety of disciplines will be presented. Data source examples will also highlight open data sources, subscription-based sources available through the UCF Libraries, along with grey literature and preprint sources will be discussed.

Presented by Sarah Norris, Ven Basco

Citation metrics provides useful quantitative data regarding the impact of a scholar's research. Learning how to maximize your reach using tools like Web of Science, Google Metrics, ORCID, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu (https://academia.edu) among others, doesn't have to be as daunting of a task as it first appears. This session will cover information on how to evaluate citation metrics as well as provide tips on how to manage your online research profiles.

Presented by Sarah Norris, Ven Basco

Learn how you can analyze and model data using interactive tools in MATLAB. Through live demonstrations and examples, you will see how you can solve many steps in a data analysis workflow without writing any code yourself. The interactive tools can then generate the MATLAB code you need to programmatically reproduce your work. This session is targeted for those who are new to MATLAB. However, experienced MATLAB users will also benefit from the session as the presenter will be covering new tools, tips and tricks from the latest releases of MATLAB.

Highlights include:
• Accessing data from many sources (files, other software, hardware, etc.)
• Using interactive tools for data visualization, cleaning, and modeling
• Automatically generating the code to replicate your interactive work
• Capturing your work in easy-to-write scripts and functions
• Sharing your results with others by automatically creating reports
• Growing your programming skills beyond the basics

Presented by Evan Cosgrove, Ph.D.

The goal of this lesson is to teach new programmers to write modular code to perform a data analysis. R is used to teach these skills because it is a commonly used programming language in many scientific disciplines. However, the emphasis is not on teaching every aspect of R, but instead on language agnostic principles like automation with loops and encapsulation with functions.

A lab environment will be provided for you, but if you wish to follow along on your own device, please have the following installed on your computer prior to the start of the workshop:
* R Software (for workshop lab materials)
* RStudio Desktop (for demo at end of workshop)

Audience: This workshop is aimed at graduate students and other researchers, but all are welcome to attend. This is a basics level workshop for an audience who intend to start working with R language in the future. You don't need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be taught.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by Fahad Khan, Ph.D.

In this workshop, participants will leverage national compute resources within the NSF-funded ACCESS ecosystem to run simple machine learning experiments and familiarize themselves with Pytorch. Designed as a concise introduction to the use of Pytorch, the presenter will share their experience using Pytorch for research. Topics we will cover include environment setup, various machine learning pipelines, loading pretrained models, and simple inference and classification. Participants will develop a solid foundation, from which they can continue learning and specializing within the Pytorch ecosystem. Additionally, participants will learn the resources available to them via the NSF-funded ACCESS program. We will explore modern on-demand interfaces that replace traditional slurm job scheduling.

Prerequisites: A laptop with internet capabilities. Note, participants will be contacted prior to the workshop and be given instructions on ACCESS account creation. Participants who do not follow these steps, or register late, will be unable to participate in the hands-on portion of this workshop.

Presented by Ben Keene

This hands-on AWS workshop is designed for researchers that are new to AWS and leveraging the cloud for research. You will learn how to launch EC2 compute instances and work with data stored in Amazon S3 using both the AWS Console and command line. You will also be introduced to Lightsail for Research and SageMaker Notebooks, two AWS services that help you analyze research data using common research tools. By the end, you'll have the knowledge and experience to confidently incorporate cloud-based solutions into your research workflows.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

This event is not being recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be sent to all registrants by the end of the second business day after the conclusion of the event. Please email ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu to request access to the materials two business days after the completion of the event if you did not register.

Presented by Gabriel Brackman

L200 – Recommended for researchers with coding experience

This hands-on coding workshop is tailored for researchers aiming to accelerate their
development of research tools and applications. You'll explore the full potential of Amazon Q Developer, an AI coding assistant that goes beyond code generation. Learn how this tool can assist in planning your application architecture, optimizing AWS resource utilization, and even troubleshooting issues with your AWS infrastructure. From crafting effective AI prompts to generating optimized code in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Java, you'll become familiar with techniques for data handling, algorithm development, and application testing. Amazon Q Developer's ability to understand complex research contexts will help you navigate coding tasks, allowing you to focus more on groundbreaking research and less on technical implementation.

By the end of this workshop, you'll be equipped to significantly boost your coding efficiency, streamline your AWS architecture planning, and quickly resolve technical hurdles.

To participate in the hands-on lab during the session, you will need to provide your own computer with a web browser and a reliable internet connection.

Julia is a new language specifically designed to be fast and replace Matlab, R, and Python. Julia behaves like an interpreted language but is just in time compiled to maximize performance, sometimes exceeding the speed of C and C++.

This session will give an overview of basic julia features and demonstrate some of its capabilities.

Presented by Steven Dick