Summer Program at AstroAI
This year for the first time we hosted the AstroAI summer program at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The program brought together young researchers from the US and abroad to a collaborative space that was incredibly successful at achieving collaborations both between the AstroAI students, and also between them and other members of the CfA community. AstroAI summer interns worked during the summer side-by-side with world-renowned experts on AI as it applies to astronomy and the physical sciences, on topics that are having significant impact on the field. For example, several of the summer students worked on generative approaches to extract information from large and complex astronomical datasets and simulations in order to tackle pressing problems in cosmology, exoplanet science, high energy astrophysics, and large language models. The program has promoted new collaborations between AstroAI and AI researchers in the students' home institutions, including MIT, McGill University, ETH Zurich, and the Polytechnic University of Milan among others.
Students regularly attended the AstroAI lunch seminar, a weekly event that brings together all those who are interested in applying AI to their research. They also maintained a busy collaboration schedule by attending the all-hands AstroAI meeting once per week as well as individual group meetings. The students particularly enjoyed the welcoming and collegial environment of AstroAI that supported their research. Worth mentioning is the fact that the AstroAI interns actively participated in the organization of the 2nd AstroAI workshop (July 7-11) with over 80 in person attendees. The students took part in logistics, and general assistance for other attendees, but also had the opportunity to interact with experts on data-centric AI, interpretability in AI, computer vision, among other cutting-edge fields.
