Our NFDI4DS Lecture Series continues with Lecture 3 at 24th Oct 2023 9:00 online
Introduction to AI4Life
Machine learning (ML) has enabled and accelerated frontier research in the life sciences, but democratised access to such methods is, unfortunately, not a given. Access to necessary hardware and software, knowledge and training, is limited, while methods are typically insufficiently documented and hard to find. Furthermore, even though modern AI-based methods typically generalize well to unseen data, no standard exists to enable sharing and fine-tuning of pre-trained models between different analysis tools. Existing user-facing platforms operate entirely independently from each other, often failing to comply with FAIR data and Open Science standards. The field of AI and ML is developing at a staggering pace, making it impossible for non-specialists to stay up to date. To enable the life science communities to benefit from AI/ML-powered image analysis methods, AI4Life will build bridges, providing urgently needed services on the common European research infrastructures. We will build an open, accessible, community-driven repository of FAIR pre-trained AI models and develop services to deliver these models to life scientists, including those without substantial computational expertise. Our direct support and ample training activities will prepare life scientists for the responsible use of AI methods, while contributor services and open standards will drive community contributions of new models and interoperability between analysis tools. Open calls and public challenges will provide state-of-the-art solutions to yet unsolved image analysis problems in the life sciences. Our consortium brings together AI/ML researchers, developers of popular open-source image analysis tools, providers of European scale storage and compute services and European life sciences Research Infrastructures – all united behind the common goal to enable life scientists to fully benefit from the untapped but potentially tremendous power of AI-based analysis methods.
Speaker: Beatriz Serrano-Solano
Beatriz holds the position of Scientific Project Manager in the Euro-BioImaging ERIC. Her responsibilities encompass the management of the work package “WP7 – Communication, Outreach and Training” and active contributions to “WP6 – Support for Open Calls, Challenges and New Services” in AI4Life (this Horizon Europe-funded project started in September 2022). With a background in Computer Science, Beatriz earned her PhD in Computational Biology, further refining her expertise during her postdoc in image analysis. Following this experience, she assumed the role of community manager for the European Galaxy project. In this role, she was deeply involved in organizing outreach, training, and community engagement activities for the global Galaxy Community.