Funding, News and Announcements

Training Sessions

ACENET's training sessions continue! For a full listing of the training available, see the website. All ACENET sessions are online unless otherwise indicated.


C++ as a Second Language
27 March, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600hrs Atlantic / 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL
A great deal of high-performance computing software is written in C++, but few universities offer courses in the language any more. If you have to work with "legacy code" written in C++, adding features, porting to a new machine, or patching errors, or if you need to extend packages like OpenFOAM which are written in C++, then this workshop is for you. C++ was designed as an extension of the C language but has its own distinct idiom or style. This workshop assumes that you already know C to the level reached in the ACENET workshop "C as a Second Language".  DETAILS & REGISTER

Molecular Dynamics
10, 12, 17, 19 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL
This is a beginner-to-intermediate level, in-depth workshop for users with no prior experience using Molecular Dynamics tools. Participants will be guided through AMBER and NAMD software for preparing and performing simulations of biomolecular systems, VMD for visualizing trajectories and manipulating PDB files, and Python for analyzing and plotting simulation data. Sessions are: Practical considerations for Molecular Dynamics; Visualizing Structures with VMD; Molecular Dynamics with AMBER and NAMD; and, Analyzing Molecular Dynamics Data with PYTRAJ.  Prerequisite: experience with Linux.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Introduction to Neural Network Architecture
12 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL 
Have you wondered how machine learning models can suddenly do so many different types of work? How is it that machines can learn things like language, vision and translation in such a short amount of time, and what has helped drive these kinds of improvements? The obvious answers - big data and big processors - are only part of the story, and to understand the full picture, we need to take a closer look at the models driving the AI revolution. This talk is aimed at people who are familiar with the basics of feed-forward neural networks, and will involve an in-depth explanation of how information is represented for machines to learn from, how machines can make sense of information, and the challenges presented.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Introduction to Natural Language Processing
16 April, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic / 1330-1630hrs NL
How do computers understand language? It seems impossible that zeroes and ones could ever add up to words that humans can understand, but machine language has come a long way in the past few years. Let us take you behind the code to explain how machines simulate language comprehension, and why it’s a far more complicated problem than “bonjour = hello”. This talk is aimed at an audience who is not necessarily familiar with computers or language comprehension, but would like a primer to the field, and what it can realistically do. We will explain natural language processing from the perspective of machines that cannot understand words, but capture semantic meaning by processing data.  DETAILS & REGISTER

Fortran as a Second Language
24 April, 1000-1200hrs and 1400-1600hrs Atlantic / 1030-1230hrs and 1430-1630hrs NL
Fortran, one of the initial high-level programming languages, continues to be an excellent option for high-performance computing due to its superb performance. The newer versions of Fortran offer many modern features, including object-oriented programming capabilities to programmers. This course will cover some of these features. Prerequisite: familiarity with another programming language.  DETAILS & REGISTER

More training sessions can be viewed from partners at Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. 

Survey on Digital Humanities/Digital Skills Training

Have you participated in a digital humanities or digital skills workshop in the last five years (2019-2023) as a learner, instructor, and/or organizer? Have you wanted to participate in workshop training and have not been able to or decided not to? Do you have some thoughts about what could help you participate in the future, even if you haven’t participated in the past? If you answered yes to any of the above, ACENET wants to hear from you!
 
Bridget Moynihan (INKE Postdoctoral Fellow), Kelly Hughes (University of Guelph), Laura Estill (St Francis Xavier University), Kim Martin (University of Guelph), Susan Brown (University of Guelph), and Constance Crompton (University of Ottawa) are conducting an online bilingual survey supported by the INKE partnership (PI: Ray Siemens) and the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities/Certificat canadien en Humanités Numériques (cc:DH/HN).
 
The survey aims to find out more about the shape of the workshop training environment. They want to hear from people who have ATTENDED, people who have TAUGHT, people who have ORGANIZED, and people who HAVEN’T yet participated in digital humanities and digital skills workshops. They want to understand the benefits, the challenges, the value, and the barriers that are implicated in workshop training. While they are focusing on the Canadian training context, they are open to participants who live, research, and/or train in any country around the world!

The survey should take no more than 20 minutes to complete. Your IP address will not be recorded and your responses will be kept anonymous. 

The survey is open until April 2, 2024.

English version survey