Upcoming Events
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ICER and IBEEM Training Seminar
GenAI on the HPCC

Michigan State University’s Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (ICER), in partnership with the Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolution and Macrosystems (IBEEM), are excited to announce the Spring-2026 GenAI on the High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC) seminar. This non-credit, two-part series is designed to provide researchers from a wide variety of disciplines with a hands-on introduction to tools for integrating generative AI into research computing pipelines on ICER’s HPCC.

The workshop will feature an ecology-focused use case on using AI for ecological data synthesis from scientific literature. 

When: 
Wednesday, March 11th 2-5 PM ET
Wednesday, March 18th 2-5 PM ET

Where: 
MSU Campus (Location TBD)
or
Virtual (zoom link provided after registration)

REGISTER HERE

*Participants need an active HPCC account to access the HPCC. If you do not have an existing account, please see our documentation on Obtaining an HPCC Account.  
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The prerequisites for meaningful participation in the hands-on exercises are listed below.  

• Active ICER HPCC account 
• ​Basic understanding of the HPCC resource environment and the SLURM scheduler (HPCC Foundations Webinar Series)  
• Basic competency with Python and GNU/Linux Operating Systems (necessary code will be provided)  
• Basic understanding of fundamental machine learning concepts e.g., regression, classification, training, testing/inference, supervised vs unsupervised learning  

Part 1: GenAI overview and getting started with Ollama

• Wednesday, March 11th, 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm   
• Learning objectives:  
  • Understand core concepts of Generative AI (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs)  
  • Understand differences between cloud-hosted and locally run LLM workflows  
  • Understand basics of running and managing LLMs with Ollama  
  • Use Ollama with a Python environment for simple programmatic inference  
  • Recognize resource considerations (memory, CPU, GPU, etc.) when running LLMs locally  
  • Identify common use-cases and how to integrate local GenAI models into workflows (e.g., domain specific documentation chatbot, literature review, entity-relation extraction)  

Part 2: Fine-tuning and RAG systems  

• Wednesday, March 18th, 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm  
• Learning objectives:  
  • Construct a minimal RAG system with use-case data  
  • Understand concepts for assessing model performance with quantitative and qualitative criteria  
  • Understand resource requirements for fine-tuning and RAG workflows  
  • Manage model artifacts, embeddings, and checkpoints  
  • Understand fundamental concepts of agentic GenAI systems  

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Past Events

IBEEM Workshop (Spring 2024): ​
​Collaborative Coding for Scientific Research: 
Git, Github, and open science

sponsored by the MSU Institute for Biodiversity, Ecology, Evolution, and Macrosystems (IBEEM) and Institute for Cyber-enabled Reseach (ICER)​

Do you have a basic understanding of scientific coding and collaborative tools like GitHub, but find yourself exasperated when trying to code with others or lost in the depths of GitHub trying to figure out what somebody else’s code package is trying to do?

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS WORKSHOP MATERIALS

Through this in-person workshop you will learn to:

• Explore and understand the organization of a github code repositories that support research publications and/or packages.
• Use others’ code in your own workflows.
• Engage with the owners/maintainers and the broader coding community to identify and participate in discussion of issues.

Prerequisites:We encourage participants to meet the following prerequisites. However, we will be sending out a list of resources in advance of the workshop if there is one or more area(s) you’d like to brush up on:

• Coding: Be comfortable with coding in a language like R and/or Python. In other words: You should be familiar with reading/writing and basic wrangling of files or dataframes.
  • Resources: 
    • Tidying data in R (Ch. in Data Science with R by Garrett Grolemund)
    • Tidying data in Python (Ch. in Python for Data Science by Turrell et al.)
• Git: Have used Git to track changes in your code, OR have completed the introduction to the "git" distributed version control system on the Software Carpentries website, and understand the terms: git add, commits, commit message, git history, git remote, push, pull.
  • Resources: 
    • Version control with git (Software Carpentries)
• GitHub: Have at least minimal experience with github and ideally have a project with some of your code there. 
  *If you have no experience with Github, then, prior to the workshop, please create an account. If you have attended a previous workshop covering these tasks, then that is sufficient. 
  • Resources: 
    • Version control with git and GitHub - general intro and RStudio set-up (NSF Arctic Data Center)
    • Integrating git and GitHub with VS Code for Python users (VS Code tutorial)
• Open Science: Desire to become more of an active participant in the open science community. In other words: Be curious about using others' code and writing code that others can use.

​​Our goal is to open the door for you to participate with confidence in collaborative coding, both with immediate colleagues and the broader open science community!

Attend

When: 
​    Tuesday, April 16th: 2:00-4:00 PM ET
 

Where:  
​   Inside Room 1400
Biomedical and Physical Sciences (BPS) Building, 567 Wilson Road, on the MSU Campus. 

Registration

Registration Form
(Google form requiring MSU Log-in)* 
 http://tiny.cc/ztlkxz 

This in-person workshop is limited to 20 participants.

If you have any questions or trouble with the form, please contact us

Instructors

Kelly Kapsar, PhD she/her/hers
Research Associate
Center for Systems Integration & Sustainability
MSU Department of Fisheries & Wildlife
[email protected]

​Pat Bills he/him
Research Software Engineer/Data Scientist
IBEEM & ICER
[email protected]