The Translational Data Analytics Institute (TDAI) officially launched its new hands-on workshop series, AI in Your Research, with an inaugural session led by TDAI Data Scientist Dr. Alex Davis. Held in Pomerene Hall, the full-day workshop drew over 40 participants from across academic disciplines, all eager to explore how cutting-edge AI tools can be integrated into their research workflows and processes.

The kickoff workshop, Generative AI in Your Research, focused on helping researchers leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance and streamline the academic literature review process. Participants worked hands-on with commercial LLMs in Python environments, gaining practical skills through interactive, application-based tutorials.

Key topics included:

• Transformer architecture and LLM fundamentals
• Comparison of commercial and open-source LLMs
• Ethical and security considerations for research applications
• Prompt engineering strategies
• Document formatting for LLM ingestion
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Article summarization and theme detection
• Knowledge graph construction

Participants also received support in setting up their environments and were provided with curated resources for continued experimentation. The day concluded with extended office hours for personalized guidance on applying LLMs to individual research projects.

This successful launch marks the beginning of a rolling TDAI workshop series dedicated to equipping OSU researchers with practical, emerging AI methodologies. A second session of Generative AI in Your Research is planned for early July, with future workshops focused on image analysis and time series analysis in development for later this year. TDAI is committed to expanding this series into a full slate of rolling workshops through 2026.

For updates and registration information, visit tdai.osu.edu or contact the team at tdai@osu.edu.