AI@LBNL Webinars and Workshop

AI@LBNL Webinar Series

The Lab hosted a virtual webinar series intended to familiarize the Berkeley Lab community with AI initiatives, tools, and resources and explain how our Lab’s AI research can address national needs. They also helped to spur ideas for the AI Workshop in October.

The sessions and topics are:

• Aug. 15, 11 a.m.- Noon  Introduction to FASST (Jonathan Carter)
  • Watch the recording (LDAP required)
• Aug. 22, 11 a.m.- Noon  Developing Berkeley Lab’s AI Strategy Q+A (Carol Burns)
  • Watch the recording | See the slides
• Aug. 29, 11 a.m.- Noon  Infrastructure for Scientific AI Research (Wahid Bhimji & Adam Stone)
  • Watch the recording | See Wahid’s slides (NERSC), See Adam’s Slides (LBNL IT)
• Sept. 12, 11 a.m.- Noon AI-ready Data (Sarah Richardson)
  • Watch the recording
• Sept. 19, 11 a.m.- Noon AI Models for Science (Ben Erichson and Marcus Noack)
  • Watch the recording | See Ben Erichson’s Slides, See Marcus Noack’s slides

Other AI Events at the Lab:

• On Sept. 26, the Energy Sciences Area (ESA) hosted a workshop on AI/ML for chemistry and materials science research.
• On October 24-25, the Computing Sciences Area (CSA) organized a “Berkeley Lab AI for Science Summit”

AI Workshop

The AI@LBNL Workshop on October 7-8 was designed to deepen our understanding of AI activities at Berkeley Lab and prepare us for the upcoming DOE Office of Science AI roundtables (more details about these roundtables in webinar #2). The workshop focused on identifying scientific challenges that AI can address and uncovering Berkeley Lab’s core strengths in scientific research, data science, and computing methodologies that position the Lab at the forefront of AI-driven discovery. Participants collaborated to identify necessary investments in technology, partnerships, and research that will drive future AI initiatives.

The workshop was held in a hybrid format, with introductory talks and panel discussions livestreamed. In-person attendees participated in breakout sessions.

Slide presentations from the workshop are below:

• Peter Fischer
• Stefan Wild
• Kjiersten Fagnan
• Charu Varadharajan
• Ben Nachman
• Tianzhen Hong

AI Tools and Resources

• CBorg AI Portal is a suite of AI services, example code, and documentation provided by the Berkeley Lab IT Division’s Science IT Group to act as a resource for Berkeley Lab researchers and staff to utilize AI-based technologies including chat, text analysis, and summarization, AI-assisted search techniques, RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), AI-assisted programming, image analysis and more.
• View and contribute to our background document repository. In preparation for the workshop, we’ve created a background document repository containing reports, presentations, and other documents that provide useful information for both the workshop and the Office of Science roundtables. 
• View the Lab’s AI web page.
  
• If you know of any tools or resources that should be added to this list, please contact Linda Vu.

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AI@LBNL Steering Committee

Expert Advisory Committee:

• Jonathan Carter, Computing Sciences Area
• Ana Kupresanin, Computing Sciences Area
• Alexander Hexemer, Energy Sciences Area
• Ben Nachman, Physical Sciences Area
• Kjiersten Fagnan, Biosciences Area
• Charuleka Varadharajan, Earth and Environmental Sciences Area
• Tianzhen Hong, Energy Technologies Area
• Andrew Schmeder, Science IT

Government Relations:

• Jonathan Nurse
• Clarissa Bhargava

Strategic Communications:

• John German
• Linda Vu
• Katie Carney