Curious about astronomy and the galaxy? Check out this masterclass

The masterclass is two half-days

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NEWS RELEASE
ALGOMA UNIVERSITY
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Kevin Vinsen, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) will be visiting Algoma University this week to give a lecture and teach two half-day programming masterclasses open to the public.

Please register for the Masterclasses by emailing [email protected]or Dr. Nicola Shaw ([email protected]), as limited spots are available.

April 16 | 2:30-4:30 p.m. | Algoma University, NW 205 - Masterclass on Python for Machine Learning

Python has emerged over the last couple decades as a first-class tool for scientific computing tasks, including the analysis and visualisation of large datasets. The usefulness of Python for data science stems primarily from the large and active ecosystem of third-party packages. This half-day, hands-on course with show you the basics of the Python language and give you enough Python to be able to complete the Machine Learning half-day course.

April 17 | 7 p.m. | Algoma University, Doc Brown Lounge - Radio Astronomy, The Square Kilometre Array and Citizen Science: Canada & Australia

Every wondered:

How we might get to Proxima Centauri B?
What are the different types of astronomy?
What is the Square Kilometre Array Canada is involved in and will it really process the same volume of data as the current worldwide internet (spoiler - yes it will)?
Was the Big Bang real?
What is special and general relativity?
What's the latest news from the astronomy world?
What is a neutron star?
What are gravitational waves?
If GAIA is going to catalogue 1 billion objects, how are we going to process them?
How can you get involved in helping astronomers?

Kevin Vinsen will try and answer these questions in this public lecture, without complex mathematics (but perhaps just).

April 18 | 2:30-4:30 pm | Algoma University, NW 205 - Masterclass on Machine Learning

Machine Learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere; if you want to know how companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft extract meaning and insights from massive data sets, this half-day, hands-on course will give you the fundamentals you need. Data Scientists enjoy one of the top-paying jobs, with an average salary of Can$160,000, according to Glassdoor and Indeed. That's just the average! And it's not just about money - it's interesting work too!

If you've got some Python 3.7 experience, this course will teach you the basic techniques used by real data scientists and machine learning practitioners in the astronomy world. If you have no Python experience, but can program then attend the Python half-day course first, this will equip you with the basics you need.

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Kevin Vinsen is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, with funding from the State Government of Western Australia.

Kevin’s main research interests are high-performance computing at the ExaScale, developing methods for the automated classification of galaxies using multi-wavelength data, machine learning algorithms and modelling complex systems. Kevin is also working with Algoma University on the AstroQuest project.

Kevin considers himself one of the luckiest geeks on the planet. He is paid to do what he loves - astronomy and computing with some of the biggest, baddest computers on the planet. No wonder he is always smiling.

If you want to see him speak, check out his TedX Talk