Christopher J. Blanton, who provides advanced technical services for ICS and the Materials Research Institute, will lead the workshop. He said that the workshop was organized due to increased interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning from the Penn State research community.
“Dealing with massive amounts of data to develop models is, in many ways, what science is really about. However, the amount of data that is now available to us makes it necessary to use sophisticated computational algorithms; that is, machine learning, in order to make tomorrow’s breakthroughs,” said Blanton, who holds a doctorate in computational and theoretical chemistry.
“The workshops are really in response to that exponentially increasing amounts of data and an increase in demand from researchers who want to use machine learning as a way to understand the data and learn to harness these powerful tools to bring tomorrow’s breakthroughs to Penn State," he said.
He added that the workshop may help researchers who are interested in studying the implications of AI and machine learning, for example the technology’s social and ethical considerations.
This will be a hands-on workshop that will cover the basic underpinnings of machine learning and TensorFlow so that researchers can begin to implement this technology for their own research. Google’s Google Brain team originally developed TensorFlow for internal use at the company, but Google officials eventually released it as an open source framework. Google used TensorFlow for their own research and production duties.
The workshop is free and open to all Penn State faculty, staff and students. Advance registration is required. People who attend should have an understanding of the Python coding language prior to attending this workshop.
To find more information, or to register, at the event page.