AI for Scientists

"Using AI to enhance and streamline the work of Scientists"

Jevin Lortie and Ben ran this workshop first at the UW-Madison Research Bazaar in February, 2024, and since then have been requested to run the workshop for multiple groups on campus. About the workshop:

Our workshop will equip participants with practical AI insights, tools, and creative inspiration to enhance their research projects and productivity by leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) user interfaces (literally data in action). AI raises the quality of all users' quality of work and productivity to a similar increased level beyond their baselines. We will showcase this boost for better grant-writing and workflows, which we believe makes science more equitable. In our workshop, we will focus on how to navigate the world of LLMs like ChatGPT, Bard, and Perplexity AI for scientific research, balancing time for learning and applying concepts.

Delving into how to use these LLMs effectively can be overwhelming, especially when these models create false information and updates are rapid. We will address barriers to use and provide the perspective of these LLMs as a personal overeager intern, willing to offload time-consuming tasks but requiring specific instructions via prompt engineering. We will share the ROBOT prompt engineering framework to generate consistent and high-quality outputs: Role, Objective, Background, Output, Trial and Error. Building on ROBOT, we will share how to use placeholder variables to accelerate repetitive tasks and across media types (social media posts, about pages, biographies, etc). 

Lastly, we will show how we use these LLMs for scientific grant writing and research trajectories. We will share which LLMs are more equipped for searching the web for scientific manuscripts, summarizing research fields, and finding knowledge gaps. We will demonstrate how these LLMs can help us eliminate the blank page problem for abstracts and grants.

In the end, attendees will leave with skills on how to use LLMs to productively enhance their science and daily tasks. The workshop will be led by Jevin Lortie and Ben Rush, both experienced AI users with years of experience in teaching, public speaking, and facilitation.