This workshop focuses on the basics of working with Large Language Models (LLMs) as part of the research pipeline, including understanding and interrogating the models themselves as well as interacting with their generative capabilities. Specific topics will include: setting up your own open-source LLM, fine-tuning LLMs, interacting with LLMs programmatically via an API, and the basics of prompt engineering.

Prerequisites: This workshop is designed for researchers from all domains with prior programming experience. Basic Python and command-line (shell) skills are required.

Prior to attending this workshop participants should be able to:

• Load text data into Python
• Load Python libraries
• Work with different Python data structures (strings, lists, dictionaries)
• Implement control flow with for loops
• Use Pandas DataFrames (primarily: indexing and subsetting)