Bangor runs AI training for PhD students
The School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering hosted an artificial intelligent and advanced computing training event between the 5th to 7th April 2022.
It was organised for first year PhD students on the UKRI funded PhD doctoral training centre in Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and Advanced Computing (AIMLAC). The three-day event took place in the Management Centre at Bangor University and focused on the public presentation of data and code.
AIMLAC supports 4-year, fully funded PhD opportunities across the broad areas of particle physics and astronomy, biological and health, and mathematical and computer sciences. The AIMLAC centre is a collaboration between Aberystwyth, Bangor, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea universities.
Students from the AIMLAC doctoral training centre outside Bangor University
Professor Jonathan Roberts (Bangor AIMLAC lead) said “It was a privilege to host these PhD students, who came from each of the partner universities. At the AIMLAC doctoral training centre, we run several training sessions for the students, and they get taught a variety of related topics. This training event focused on data and code publication. It was excellent to run this event in person, while streaming it live for those who were remote. Much of the technical programme was led by the Research Software Engineers from Supercomputing Wales.
Professor Roberts went on to say, “while these events allow students to learn, they also enable them to chat with other PhD students who are at a similar stage of their PhD. In particularly I enjoyed the social event. We had a beautiful afternoon, the weather was exceedingly kind, walking around Bangor, along the pier, and up Bangor Mountain.
Students from the AIMLAC doctoral training centre outside Bangor University
Students from AIMLAC enjoying the view from Bangor Mountain
The students are working towards presenting their research on a research poster, that they will present at the AIMLAC conference in June.
Sam Hennessey (a first year PhD student on the AIMLAC programme, who is researching Ensembles of Deep Neural Networks) said “During the AIMLAC event I have learned many valuable skills that will help me in my academic career. We attended training for publishing code in a professional setting and automating testing suites for continuous integration of software. We were also given an opportunity to present a draft poster and receive feedback to improve the presentation and visualisation of our work.”
Daniel Farmer (a first year PhD student on AIMLAC, who is studying immersive analytics) added “The Bangor AIMLAC event was a lot of fun. At the start of the week, we all got a chance to present early versions of our posters, to get feedback and understand what each other had been up to since the last event. We had multiple lectures from Research Software Engineers from Supercomputing Wales on publishing code alongside papers, and how to thoroughly test and integrate code. I really look forward to the next event.”
Editor: J. C. Roberts