LINCC Tech Talk on July 11 @ 5pm UTC: A Universe To Be Decided: Democratising Science for Everyone

Dear all,

I hope you will join us for the July LINCC Tech Talk session that will take place on Thursday, July 11, at 10h PT = 13h ET = 13h CLT = 19h CET on Zoom (https://ls.st/lincc-talks ). We will hear from Jo Ciuca, who will talk about the application of Foundation Models in Science.

A Universe To Be Decided: Democratising Science for Everyone

I discuss the application of Foundation Models in Science through the collaborative efforts of the UniverseTBD consortium, with a mission to Democratise Science for Everyone. I first present HypoGen, a novel methodology for generating, evaluating, and refining scientific hypotheses using Large Language Models (LLMs). This project includes creating a shared task and dataset release to foster LLM development for hypothesis formulation in Computer Science, Astronomy and beyond. We further demonstrate the capability of LLMs in informed scientific critique and hypothesis generation, as validated by human experts. Secondly, I introduce AstroPT, a specialised foundation model trained on astronomical imagery from the DESI Legacy Survey. AstroPT demonstrates the potential of scaling laws in astronomical data, similar to those observed in natural language processing. Finally, I discuss our ongoing work on AstroLLaVA, a multi-modal model allowing interaction with astronomical images via natural language. Through UniverseTBD, we aim to inspire and explore how artificial intelligence can assist human intelligence in scientific discovery, particularly in Astronomy, but with broader implications for Science.

LINCC Tech Talks are held on the second Thursday of every month. Events are also advertised at our web page and also provided in calendar form ; and the #lincc-tech-talks LSSTC Slack channel is always available for discussions before, during, and after the talks.