Thursday, December 14, 2023

Previous | Next

• Cohere hackathon challenges students to use AI to solve pressing problems
• Safety Office publishes holiday lab shutdown memo
• Celebrating the career of Steve Cook

Cohere hackathon challenges students to use AI to solve pressing problems

Serena Ge, Cohere Intern; Ivan Zhang, Cohere CTO; Bing Hu, hackathon co-organizer and computer science PhD student; Adrien Morisot, Cohere Developer; and Ronak Pradeep, computer science PhD student.

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

In a rapidly evolving world where artificial intelligence is reshaping not only entire industries but the world itself, students need to be prepared to harness this technology to solve pressing issues. With this goal in mind, Cohere and Waterloo.AI sponsored a student-led hackathon that focused on Retrieval Augmented Generation — also known as RAG — at the University of Waterloo’s IDEAs clinic.

Collaborating with student-led groups WAT.ai and the UW Data Science Club, together with Professor Jimmy Lin, Faraz Khoubsirat, a third-year software engineering student, and Bing Hu, a computer science PhD student, organized a day-long hackathon on November 26 with more than 50 engaged participants. For the challenge, participants were asked to tackle real-world problems they could solve using Cohere’s powerful AI engines and RAG APIs.

RAG is the next-generation framework for large language models. AI models such as Cohere’s Coral use RAG to retrieve facts from an external knowledge base to ground itself on the most accurate, up-to-date information and to give users insights into its generative process. 

During the hackathon, students had full access to Cohere’s powerful models including Command, a generative AI model competitive with ChatGPT, Embed, a top-performing embedding model that converts text to vectors, and Rerank, a top-performing model that improves the relevance of search systems. With these highly capable AI tools, students were able to harness their creativity to develop innovative solutions to challenging problems. 

Read the rest of the article, including the list of winners, on the School of Computer Science website.

Safety Office publishes holiday lab shutdown memo

The December Holiday Laboratory Shutdown Memo was sent to faculty health and safety coordinators for distribution to all lab users.

Due to winter weather conditions, utilities (especially electricity) may be affected. It is a general rule that all laboratory processes be designed to safely survive a service failure.

Please review the memo for more information and contact the Safety Office with any questions.

Celebrating the career of Steve Cook

A message from Finance.

Steve Cook, Director, Procurement & Contract Services, is retiring this month after a career of 34 years with University of Waterloo.  

Steve made many contributions to the University through his work in Procurement & Contract Services including supporting the University’s diverse procurement needs, building relationships and providing support across campus and within his team, and developing a business case and recommendation for a future technology solution. We appreciate Steve’s dedication, care, expertise, skills and humour that he consistently shared with our teams. We thank Steve for his many contributions to the University and we wish Steve all the best for his retirement.  

When reflecting on his time here at UWaterloo, in Steve's own words, "U of W has been such a wonderful part of my life. I virtually grew up in Athletics, where my dad worked (Hall of Fame member), I drove (recklessly at times) the Zamboni at Columbia Icefields when I was 17, to the many, many years spent in Procurement & Contracts. I met my wonderful wife and better half here, and both of our kids are graduates. I've met so many people running the Hagey Bonspiel or the Matthews Golf tourney, sitting on various committees, and so, so many meetings. U of W has touched many parts of my life. Working with you all over these past years has certainly helped enrich the experience and made "work" a little more pleasant. I thank you for that."