LIV.INNO hosts STFC Data Science Summer School in Liverpool
The LIV.INNO Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) has hosted the 2024 STFC Data Science Summer School in Liverpool between 15th – 19th July. Almost 100 PhD students and speakers from across the UK joined the school, jointly hosted by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and the University of Liverpool, to deepen their understanding of data science during the week-long school.
Workshop during the STFC summer school.
The school started on the Monday with a talk from Prof Carsten P Welsch, Head of the QUASAR Group and Director of LIV.INNO, welcoming students to the school and giving an overview of the centres activities. This was followed by introductions from Prof Julie Seldon, Dean of the Doctoral School at LJMU and Naomi Smith, LIV.INNO Centre Manager. The students then split into smaller groups to study in workshop sessions which were all led by the Hartree Centre before finishing the day with an Ice Breaker exercise lead by Dr Alex Hill, Data Science Fellow at the University of Liverpool.
The Tuesday started with a lecture on Agentic AI for Data Analysis by Boris Bolliet of the University of Cambridge, followed again by three smaller workshops on Neural Network Emulators, GIT and Algorithms for Astrophysics. After lunch more lectures about Machine Learning and self-supervised learning followed before a poster session where the students got to present their work to each other. The day concluded with an evening lecture which was open to the public by Professor Anna Scaife (University of Manchester) who spoke about AI and Aliens.
Prof Anna Scaife presented a public talk on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Aliens’
On Wednesday the day started with a lecture on Open source science before three parallel workshops on PyAutofit, Big Data Python Ecosystems and Publishing Code took place.
The Thursday was a day dedicated to industry with a wide range of speakers from industries who use data science. It started with a talk from Zhe Wang of Google Deepmind before students split into smaller workshops led by Naimuri, NHS England and Ed Bennett (Swansea University) who ran a workshop on Numpy. The afternoon saw short talks from the Dogs Trust, The Guardian, Multiverse and KPMG before the students were given the opportunity to quiz all of the speakers in some panel sessions.
On the final day the students were set a challenge in a Kaggle competition run by Dr David Hutchcroft, University of Liverpool. This challenge allowed the students to use the data science skills which they had acquired during the week to solve the challenge which was set while working in teams with new colleagues.
The winning team of the Kaggle competition challenge.
The school was considered as very successful by participants. The students commented on the very positive learning environment provided, the opportunities for networking with others, and that they felt they learned a lot of useful new things.
More details about the school and all presentations can be found at https://indico.ph.liv.ac.uk/event/1639/ .