2025-07-10 –, Room 318
AI, particularly generative AI, is rapidly transforming the scientific landscape, offering unprecedented opportunities and novel challenges across all stages of research. This Birds of a Feather session aims to bring together researchers, developers, and practitioners to share experiences, discuss best practices, and explore the evolving role of AI in science.
Informed by a brief presentation on outputs from a recent participatory design workshop led by UW's Scientific Software Engineering Center, which is housed within the eScience Institute, we will foster a discussion around how AI is being applied throughout the research lifecycle, including:
- Research Conception and Execution: From AI-driven literature reviews and hypothesis generation to optimizing research infrastructure, streamlining data collection, automating metadata generation, and even generating synthetic data.
- Data Analysis and Interpretation: Leveraging AI for complex data interpretation, pattern recognition, and advanced visualization.
- Research Dissemination: Exploring AI's assistance in drafting manuscripts, navigating peer review, and communicating findings for broader societal impact.
- Research Funding and Evaluation: Discussing AI tools for grant proposal development, collaboration identification, and engaging with feedback to measure research impact.
Furthermore, the floor will be open to share insights on how AI is uniquely advancing specific fields and domains, such as materials science, climate modeling, and drug discovery.
Join us to discuss current successes, identify common pain points, address ethical considerations, and envision the future of AI-augmented science. This BoF is for anyone interested in leveraging or understanding AI's impact on scientific discovery, implementation, publication, and beyond. AI for science is actively being built. It is critical that researchers and open source advocates are leading the charge.
Inessa is building bridges between people, open science, and open source software. She is passionate about making Python accessible for learners at all levels and has led numerous newcomer sprints, study groups, and tutorials. Inessa currently serves on the NumPy Steering Council and PyOpenSci Advisory Board. In her role as Open Source Program Manager at OpenTeams, Inessa has launched and actively supports several educational initiatives focused on widening the open source contributor pipeline. She is perpetually fascinated by incentive design, collaborative intelligence, and jazz.
Cordero Core is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Washington’s eScience Institute, where he builds open-source tools that help researchers accelerate discovery across domains. With over a decade of experience in scientific computing, AI/ML, and cloud infrastructure, his work has supported innovation in fields like digital pathology, neuroscience, astrophysics, and education. He is the inventor of a patented computational microscopy system (US11347046B2) and contributes to projects such as Caustics, WetAI, and LLMaven.
Cordero also co-founded multiple companies—startups focused on structured data systems and AI-powered product development—and serves on the advisory board for the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, mentoring founders and early-career technologists. His work bridges research, entrepreneurship, and community building, with a deep commitment to open science and accessible software design.
Anant Mittal is a Senior Research Engineer at the Scientific Software Engineering Center within the eScience Institute. He is interested in designing and building metascience tools for areas such as astronomy, applied machine learning, climate, health, energy, and other physical and life sciences fields.
He received his Ph.D. from the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, focusing on human-computer interaction. His dissertation focused on designing, implementing, and examining systems for communication, collaboration, and coordination in complex settings like accessibility (e.g., interactions among people with and without disabilities) and health (e.g., patients with chronic conditions collaborating with providers for care).
Carlos is a Senior Principal Research Software Engineer with the UW Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC), where he leads Software Engineering and Machine Learning projects in collaboration with researchers to build robust, scalable scientific software.
He brings over 25 years of experience in software development, having held senior engineering and leadership roles at Microsoft, Meta, and various startups. He spent 17 years at Microsoft, most of them in Microsoft Research, working at the intersection of science and engineering.
Carlos is a UW alumnus with Master’s degrees in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. He earned his undergraduate degree in Physics Engineering from ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico.