The Office of Research Cyberinfrastructure promotes workshops, events, and training for researchers at University of Central Florida (UCF). Subscribe to updates to receive email notifications for upcoming events and new opportunities. View past events in our events archive.
Upcoming Training & Seminars
If you are starting your Overleaf journey and looking for a clear, beginner‑friendly introduction to LaTeX, this workshop is designed for you. Overleaf is a collaborative, cloud‑based platform that streamlines the process of creating professional documents using LaTeX—an essential tool for producing research papers, theses, posters, and technical reports.
Learning outcomes:
- Overleaf and LaTeX Basics
- Creating a new project
- Using Visual Editor
- Editing your project
- Sharing your project
- Adding Images and Tables
- Uploading a bibliography
- Fixing errors
- Sharing your project
- Submitting your project to a journal
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 Sara Gonzalez
Commercial cloud platforms offer capabilities that are hard to replicate on campus: specialized hardware, managed AI services, quantum backends, globally distributed infrastructure, and always-on hosting for gateways and community tools. The obstacle is usually funding and procurement, not technical need. CloudBank, an NSF-funded service platform, removes that obstacle. U.S.-based researchers and educators can receive allocations in dollars, usable across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud, at no cost to the researcher or the department.
In this one-hour session, the CloudBank team will walk UCF researchers and instructors through what the service provides and, most importantly, how to get an allocation. Topics include the ACCESS allocation tiers and award ceilings (Explore up to $10,000 per year, Discover up to $37,500 per year, Accelerate and Maximize up to $75,000 per year); what a successful request contains, including a cloud cost estimate, allocation type, supporting grant information where applicable, and a CV for the PI and any co-PIs; and what happens after an award, including automatic cloud account provisioning through the CloudBank Portal, federated login with ACCESS credentials, managing authorized users, and automated usage tracking and spend alerts.
The session highlights use cases of particular interest at UCF: running and evaluating AI and foundation models on commercial platforms, and estimating what they will cost before committing; quantum computing through IBM Cloud, where CloudBank provides a route our researchers do not otherwise have; and teaching and training, including CloudBank Classroom, a browser-based JupyterHub for coursework that requires no local setup by students. Presenters will also address fit. CloudBank is aimed at modest-scale AI workloads, small research production infrastructure, specialized hardware, distributed-systems experiments, and hosted gateways, while large-scale compute and GPU-heavy jobs are better served by on-premises ACCESS and NAIRR resources.
Audience: Open to all UCF faculty, researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and instructors. No prior cloud experience required; attendees new to commercial cloud are especially welcome.
Presented by Shava Smallen, Rob Fatland, Eric Van Dusen
This advanced Overleaf workshop is designed for participants who are already familiar with the basics of LaTeX and are ready to develop more sophisticated document‑authoring skills. This workshop will be conducted by a specialist form the Overleaf team. There will be time for questions and discussions with the presenter.
Learning outcomes:
- Best Practices For Document Structures
- Cross-referencing
- Math Typesetting
- Creating Complex Tables
- Advanced Figures
- Reference Management with Mendeley/Zotero
- Using Templates
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 Sara Gonzalez
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is pleased to present a Machine Learning and Big Data workshop.
This workshop will focus on topics including big data analytics and machine learning with Spark, as well as deep learning.
This will be an IN PERSON event hosted by UCF, there WILL NOT be a direct to desktop option for this event.
This event is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, there is NO REGISTRATION FEE to attend.
Interested applicants must first have an ACCESS ID. If you do not have an ACCESS ID, please visit this page to create one: https://identity.access-ci.org/new-user
Once you have an ACCESS ID, please first Login, then complete the following registration page by Monday, October 12 at 11AM Eastern time: https://support.access-ci.org/events/9300
We’ll show how generative and agentic AI can be used within and alongside MATLAB and Simulink to help with tasks such as creating and refining code and models, exploring algorithms, running simulations, automating repetitive work, and speeding up design iterations. We’ll also introduce core agentic AI concepts and show how the MATLAB and Simulink platforms fit into these workflows.
Throughout the session, we’ll highlight how MATLAB and Simulink help engineers and scientists validate, refine, and apply AI-generated results so they can be used with greater confidence in engineering contexts. Whether you’re new to these technologies or already exploring them, this webinar will provide a practical foundation for understanding how generative and agentic AI can enhance existing engineering and science workflows.
Learning Objectives:
• Agentic AI overview, fundamentals & key concepts
• Learn how to connect MATLAB with AI (Agents & MCP)
• Explore custom skills available through MATLAB and Simulink Agentic Toolkits
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 Evan Cosgrove, Ph.D.
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center is pleased to present a Machine Learning and Big Data workshop.
This workshop will focus on topics including big data analytics and machine learning with Spark, as well as deep learning.
This will be an IN PERSON event hosted by UCF, there WILL NOT be a direct to desktop option for this event.
This event is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, there is NO REGISTRATION FEE to attend.
Interested applicants must first have an ACCESS ID. If you do not have an ACCESS ID, please visit this page to create one: https://identity.access-ci.org/new-user
Once you have an ACCESS ID, please first Login, then complete the following registration page by Monday, October 12 at 11AM Eastern time: https://support.access-ci.org/events/9300
Prompt engineering is the practice of writing clear and effective instructions to get better responses from large language models (LLMs). This beginner-friendly workshop introduces the basic ideas of prompt engineering and shows how small changes in a prompt can improve the quality, accuracy, and usefulness of AI-generated responses.
Participants will learn simple and practical techniques such as giving clear instructions, assigning roles, breaking tasks into steps, and using examples in prompts. The session will focus on easy-to-understand concepts and real demonstrations using OpenAI models.
The workshop will also include hands-on examples showing how different prompt styles affect the model’s output. Through these demonstrations, participants will gain a practical understanding of how to write better prompts for academic, professional, and everyday use.
This workshop is intended for anyone who is curious about using AI tools more effectively. No advanced background is required. A general interest in AI, ChatGPT, or language models will be helpful, but the session is designed especially for beginners.
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.
Presented by Nafisa Islam
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 half 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.
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 Steven Dick
Healthy data management provides a foundation for strong research. This session will introduce participants to the components of a data management plan, data management processes, the DMPTool, and data repositories. Topics include data expectations, data and metadata standards, access and sharing considerations, and data storage and preservation.
This event will not be recorded. Any materials provided by the presenter will be shared with registered participants within two business days following 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 Sarah Norris
Research involving human subjects carries obligations that extend well past IRB approval — they follow the data through collection, storage, sharing, and retention. This 60-minute virtual session brings the IRB and Information Security together to walk researchers through what those obligations look like in practice, and how to meet them without slowing a project down.
The IRB portion covers what reviewers look for in a protocol's data plan: how identifiable data is described, consent and participant privacy commitments, de-identification and coding, data sharing with external collaborators, and what constitutes a reportable change once a study is underway. The Information Security portion addresses safeguarding that data on the systems where it actually lives — appropriate storage and access controls, protecting sensitive and restricted data, secure transfer and collaboration, and common missteps that create exposure.
A dedicated segment covers vendor risk management (VRM): why new tools, apps, and cloud services used in research must be assessed before data is placed in them, what the review process looks at, how long it typically takes, and how to plan for it early so vendor selection doesn't become a late-stage roadblock.
Attendees will leave knowing where IRB and security requirements intersect, which campus resources and approved services are available for storing and sharing research data, and who to contact at each stage. Ample time is reserved for Q&A.
Audience: Open to all UCF faculty, researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff.
Presented by Renea Carver, Antonio Fazzalari
LaTeX is a document preparation system widely used in academic and research communities for creating journal articles, thesis, technical reports, presentations, and other scientific documents. This hands-on workshop introduces the fundamentals of LaTeX and is intended for participants with little or no prior experience.
Learning Outcomes:
- Navigate Overleaf and create a new LaTeX project.
- Understand the basic structure and syntax of a LaTeX document.
- Format text and organize content using sections, lists, and other common LaTeX commands.
- Add equations, figures, tables, citations, and cross-references.
The workshop will use Overleaf which is a freely available online LaTeX editor. Overleaf premium licenses are available for UCF faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and select staff members. 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. For further instructions for creating account visit: https://rci.research.ucf.edu/resource/overleaf/
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.
Presented by Fahad Khan, Ph.D.
Learn how to create clear, accurate, and effective data visualizations using Python. Participants will explore key principles of visualization design, including how to choose appropriate chart types, use color effectively, and avoid common plotting mistakes involving scales, axes, ordering, labels, and other design choices. The session will also introduce three widely used Python visualization libraries, (Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly), and discuss their strengths, differences, and appropriate use cases. Guided demonstrations and hands-on exercises will give participants experience creating and improving visualizations with each library.
Learning outcomes:
- Principles of effective data visualization
- Choosing appropriate chart types for different types of data
- Using color effectively and avoiding misleading color choices
- Recognizing and correcting common visualization mistakes
- Comparing Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Plotly and when to use each
- Creating visualizations in Python with Matplotlib
- Creating statistical visualizations with Seaborn
- Creating interactive visualizations with Plotly
Presented by Satyar Foroughi
MATLAB EXPO Online is a technical conference for engineers, scientists, researchers, and educators to hear about industry trends, learn about the latest features and capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink, and network with peers and industry leaders.
Join MATLAB EXPO Online 2026 to connect with MathWorks and industry experts to learn about the latest trends and advancements in engineering and science. You will discover new features and capabilities for MATLAB and Simulink that you can immediately apply to your work.
Featured Topics
• AI and Agentic AI
• Digital Engineering and Model-Based Design
• Cloud, CI/CD, and DevOps
• Electrification and Energy Systems
• Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Day 1: 11:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. EST
Day 2: 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. EST
Registration: MATLAB EXPO Online is free. Registration is required to attend.
Agenda: https://eventsonline.mathworks.com/series/matlab-expo-online-2026-agenda/landing_page
MATLAB EXPO Online is a technical conference for engineers, scientists, researchers, and educators to hear about industry trends, learn about the latest features and capabilities in MATLAB and Simulink, and network with peers and industry leaders.
Join MATLAB EXPO Online 2026 to connect with MathWorks and industry experts to learn about the latest trends and advancements in engineering and science. You will discover new features and capabilities for MATLAB and Simulink that you can immediately apply to your work.
Featured Topics
• AI and Agentic AI
• Digital Engineering and Model-Based Design
• Cloud, CI/CD, and DevOps
• Electrification and Energy Systems
• Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Day 1: 11:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. EST
Day 2: 11:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. EST
Registration: MATLAB EXPO Online is free. Registration is required to attend.
Agenda: https://eventsonline.mathworks.com/series/matlab-expo-online-2026-agenda/landing_page
A model trained on a laptop is a good start. Turning it into something your lab can run at scale and share with collaborators usually takes a lot more work. This hands-on workshop walks through the whole machine learning process on AWS, from raw data to a live model that returns predictions on demand.
You'll work in a familiar notebook environment with a research dataset. First you'll prepare the data, then train a neural network on cloud computing resources and deploy it so it answers new requests in real time. You'll also fine-tune a pre-trained AI language model on your own research vocabulary, which is one of the fastest ways to get specialized results out of today's foundation models. We'll finish with practical habits for keeping cloud costs under control.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand the full machine learning lifecycle, from data preparation to deployment
- Prepare research data for training and avoid common mistakes that skew results
- Train models on cloud computing resources without managing any hardware
- Deploy a trained model so it returns predictions in real time
- Fine-tune a pre-trained foundation model for a research-specific task
- Manage and clean up cloud resources to keep costs predictable
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