Thu, 12 Nov 2026 9:30 AM - 1:30 PM
As AI chatbots become more widely available, understanding how they work and how to prompt them effectively is increasingly important. This course provides background on the history of large language models and shows how prompt design can influence the quality and usefulness of the responses they generate.
The course takes a practical approach to using AI chatbots in biological data analysis. Participants explore how to prompt in a way that is useful for biologists and bioinformaticians, with hands-on examples that illustrate strategies and tactics for getting better results from AI tools. The teaching also considers why biology presents particular challenges for language models and how those limitations affect their use in research.
The course is aimed at researchers with no computational background and is designed to help them use generative AI more confidently in their work. Although no programming is used during the course, some examples may involve AI-generated code as a basis for in-class discussions.
