Launching our Year with AIBIO-UK

Yesterday, the L2D team made their way up to Birmingham for a superb networking and community-building launch event put on by AIBIO-UK. Establishing a rich community project created to support the incorporation and application of artificial intelligence technologies within biosciences – funded by BBSRC – this week’s January launch event proved to be very fruitful for L2D. Underscored by a both structured and uniquely freeform programme of talks and discussions, the day provided all in attendance with plentiful opportunities to network and collaborate, as well as discuss some of the questions and challenges surrounding the establishment of a successful community of AI bioscientists.

At the L2D stand, we could be seen stood by our 6-foot-tall poster, with a stand-mounted laptop showcasing our website, course materials and future prospects: primed and ready to answer questions and explain our raison d’être as one of the UK’s leading training courses in Python programming, machine learning and data science applied to bio- and health sciences. We attracted plenty of interest, with some notable discussion developing with the Quadram Institute, the Royal Microscopical Society and the Journal of Microscopy. We also peaked the interest of several BBSRC staff, discussing our ongoing development and the rich future that we have planned for L2D.

Among the keynote speakers who gave some thought-provoking talks were Dr. Annalisa Occhipinti, Dr. Sebastien Ahnert and NVIDIA’s Dr. Christian Dallago. The latter presented some excellent advances in machine learning applied to proteomics, and touched on the age-old issue of compute power resources, and how NVIDIA have engaged to tackle these problems for bioscientists with their cutting-edge processor technologies and high-performance computers.

Between keynote speakers, the day was peppered with insightful question-focused discussion sessions, where groups of those in attendance would back-and-forth their perception of challenges within the community, while brainstorming many excellent proposed solutions; and crucially, what they wanted to see from the emergent AIBIO-UK community, with the aim of resolving and co-working towards a highly interdisciplinary network of AI-focused bioscience professionals.

Among the many subjects discussed, was a recurrent demand for community events, giving us plenty of food-for-thought in line with organising our own event on how to train expert bioscience and health researchers in applied AI. An apt way for us to feed into our community, given that roughly a quarter of the day’s discussions and activities were related to training and education.

L2D would like to thank AIBIO-UK for putting on a sterling first event, creating some invaluable connections for, not only ourselves, but for everyone in attendance. We are confident that this will be the start of something that holds great importance in the development of applied AI in biosciences: both nationally, and in the wider world.