Categories
Supercomputing Teaching Tutorial UCloud Workshop

UCloud Courses Workshop

Developing your own UCloud course app using a newly developed template-based approach

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through all the steps of developing a UCloud course app using our newly developed template-based approach. The concept involves having a dedicated app on UCloud for your university course that students can use in e.g., exercise/lab session and/or at home. An introduction to the approach can be found in this webinar recording.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

  • Translate your course structure to a structure that is compatible with a UCloud course app.
  • Set up the course development environment which involves cloning the GitHub repository and running a course setup script.
  • Customize the provided templates to build a UCloud course app that includes all required components – software dependencies, scripts, datasets, and more.
  • Test the course on your computer during development to ensure everything functions correctly. We will also see how the final course app looks once it has been put on UCloud.

Git/GitHub and Docker are essential tools in the UCloud course development process. In the workshop, we will give short introductions to both tools primarily aimed at those participants who do not have experience with them. Participants can benefit from following introductory tutorials to Git and Docker in advance, although this is not a requirement.

Date: 11 June 2025

Time: 12:30-14:30 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Target audience: Researchers and teachers across all departments at all the Danish universities

Technical Level: Basic to Advanced

Sign up for this workshop.

Categories
Tutorial Video Recording Workshop

Workshop Recording: AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC UCloud – Harnessing Hardware & Tools for AI Development

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction and welcome
00:50 – Introduction to UCloud
05:27 – DeiC Interactive HPC website
06:07 – UCloud: Log in
07:06 – UCloud: HPC providers on the UCloud platform
11:08 – UCloud: Initial resource allocations in “My workspace”
12:27 – UCloud: Storage in “My workspace”
13:28 – UCloud: Resources and applications for new resource allocations
13:50 – UCloud: Completing the resource application
21:05 – UCloud: Resource pools and limits (what does it cost?)
23:05 – UCloud: Apps, the app store, applications index in UCloud docs
26:00 – UCloud: Advanced use cases and integration patterns

27:45 – UCloud: Transcriber: Intro and resource needs
30:08 – UCloud: Transcriber: Uploading files inside a project
31:20 – UCloud: Transcriber: Finding and launching Transcriber
32:00 – UCloud: Transcriber: Run Transcriber for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
34:28 – UCloud: Transcriber: Running multiple Transcriber jobs simultaneously
35:00 – UCloud: Transcriber: Import previous Transcriber job parameters
35:35 – UCloud: Transcriber: Opening running jobs from the “Recent runs” pane
37:15 – UCloud: Transcriber: Transcriber output directories (Jobs folder)
38:26 – UCloud: Transcriber: Transcriber outputs in “Recent runs”
39:54 – UCloud: Transcriber: Output inspection and data download of zip file

41:36 – UCloud: Chat UI: Introduction
43:27 – UCloud: Chat UI: Run Chat UI for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
48:40 – UCloud: Chat UI: First look at the Chat UI interface (disable new sign-ups and download a model)
52:36 – UCloud: Chat UI: Including documents to support Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) (i.e. supplementing the model with an additional document)
57:18 – UCloud: Chat UI: Extend the job time on any UCloud job (if needed)
58:28 – UCloud: Chat UI: Text-to-image generation (stable diffusion with a standard LLM model)
1:01:45 – UCloud: Chat UI: RAG for (best guess) document summarization (beware of model hallucinations)

1:04:45 – UCloud: Label Studio: Introduction
1:05:15 – UCloud: Label Studio: Run Label Studio for the first time (Completing the app launch screen)
1:07:55 – UCloud: Label Studio: First look at the Label Studio interface
1:09:40 – UCloud: Label Studio: Brief view of the Label Studio documentation
1:10:52 – UCloud: Label Studio: Introduction to the coming “Speech Analyser” application
1:15:45 – UCloud: Label Studio: Documentation

1:16:08 – Conclusion

Categories
HPC Interactive HPC Supercomputing UCloud Workshop

Workshops on AI applications

Join us for three new and free online workshops to explore how these tools can transform your work. Discover AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Workshop 1:

Transcribing and editing audio transcriptions with Transcriber and Speech Analyzer apps

Date: 22 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through the complete pipeline of transcribing audio files from speech to text and editing and classifying transcription segments.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Use Transcriber for transcribing audio/video files. Transcriber is based on Open AI’s Whisper language model. The app can transcribe speech audio to text in various formats and uses the WhisperX package to perform speaker recognition.
  • Navigate the new, simple, drag and drop Transcriber user interface to make it easier for you to use AI to transcribe audio files.
  • Edit and classify the transcriptions with Speech Analyzer. Speech Analyzer is an application built on top of Label Studio, specifically optimized for dialogue analysis. It enables you to label, edit, and annotate transcriptions generated using Transcriber.
  • Perform a comprehensive dialogue analysis on UCloud involving transcribing audio files using Transcriber, followed by transcription analysis with Speech Analyzer.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Researchers across all Departments, particularly Digital Humanities and Social Science, Students, AI interested.

Technical Level: Basic to Intermediate.

Sign up for this workshop

Workshop 2:

ChatUI and CVAT pipelines

Date: 27 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through two different AI based workflows, involving ChatUI and CVAT apps.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Use Chat UI as a flexible interface for hosting of various LLM models, and interact via a chat or API environment.
  • Use ChatUI for semantic search in a knowledge base.
  • Use CVAT as a powerful annotation tool, including image classification, object detection, semantic and instance segmentation, and video / 3D annotations.
  • Use advanced CVAT features including auto-annotation, algorithmic assistance, management and analytics.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Researchers across all fields, particularly transport, robotics, digital humanities, social sciences, machine learning and students.

Technical Level: Basic to Intermediate.

Sign up for this workshop

Workshop 3:

Fine-Tuning and Deploying  Large Language Models with NeMo Framework and Triton Inference Server

Date: 28 May 2025

Time: 13:00 – 15:00 (CET)

Location: Online, via Zoom (link TBA)

Join us for a hands-on workshop where we guide you through the complete pipeline of fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for specialized tasks such as medical question-answering!

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Prepare and preprocess open-source datasets for fine-tuning.
  • Apply Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) using LoRA with NVIDIA NeMo Framework.
  • Deploy optimized LLMs using NVIDIA Triton Inference Server and TensorRT-LLM.
  • Generate a synthetic Q&A dataset using Label Studio connected to a live inference backend.
  • Fine-tune and evaluate your customized LLM for domain-specific applications.

All workflows will be executed inside a UCloud project environment with access to GPU resources.

Target audience: Machine learning practitioners, researchers, and engineers interested in LLM customization, domain adaptation, or scalable model deployment.

Technical Level: Intermediate to Advanced.

Sign up for this workshop


DeiC Interactive HPC provides researchers at Danish universities with access to a variety of AI applications on UCloud that enable them to accelerate their research through powerful and secure computational tools.

Through online workshops the DeiC Interactive HPC Consortium will introduce both new and experienced users to DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI app portfolio.

The sessions are designed to equip researchers and students with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively harness DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI tools for their research.

Feel free to share with colleagues and peers who might benefit. See you there!

Categories
DeiC Event Supercomputing Workshop

Interactive HPC Consortium workshop

Yesterday, we were at First Hotel Grand Odense for the first DeiC Interactive HPC workshop of 2025

It was time to give each other a status on the developments and work done since our last consortium workshop in Rebild Bakker in the fall of 2024. Key topics included:

  • Branding and outreach
  • AI, teaching and UCloud workshops
  • Service development

Thanks to the SDU eScience Center for hosting such an engaging and insightful event! And a heartfelt thank you to all the participants who joined to discuss the key topics.

A special thanks is due to our guest speaker, head of DeiC Data Management Anne Sofie Fink for her enlightening talk on the FAIR principles and for exploring potential synergies between the DeiC DM services and the DeiC Interactive HPC service.

We look forward to continuing these important conversations and collaborations in the future! Our next consortium workshop will take place in the fall 2025, organized by Center for Humanities Computing.

Categories
UCloud Workshop

Workshops on UCloud AI applications

Join us for two free online workshops this December to explore how these tools can transform your work. Discover AI Applications on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Workshop 1:
Introduction to AI Tools on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Date: December 10th

Time: 12:30–14:00

This beginner-friendly session will introduce you the basics of AI tools with a focus on transcription and text annotation. Learn how to use these tools to streamline tasks like analyzing text and creating datasets.

Highlights:

  • Intro to fundamental AI tools
  • Hands-on demonstrations
  • Live Q&A

Whether you’re familiar with DeiC Interactive HPC -UCloud or exploring DeiC Interactive HPC -UCloud for the first time, this workshop will provide practical skills to get started.

Workshop 2:
Advanced AI Tool Development on DeiC Interactive HPC – UCloud

Date: December 11th

Time: 12:30–14:00

For experienced users ready to go deeper! Discover advanced tools like Nvidia Nemo and Triton to design and develop custom AI solutions.

Highlights:

  • Advanced AI application design
  • Tool showcases
  • Live Q&A

This workshop will focus on more advanced AI tools, offering researchers insights into designing and developing their own AI solutions.
It will showcase the Nvidia apps, Nemo and Triton, available on DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud, both specifically designed to support these efforts.


DeiC Interactive HPC provides researchers at Danish universities with access to a variety of AI applications on UCloud that enable them to accelerate their research through powerful and secure computational tools.

During two online workshops on December 10th and 11th, the DeiC Interactive HPC Consortium will introduce both new and experienced users to DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI app portfolio.

The sessions are designed to equip researchers and students with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively harness DeiC Interactive HPC/UCloud’s AI tools for their research.

Feel free to share with colleagues and peers who might benefit. See you there!

Categories
Event Workshop

Interactive HPC Consortium workshop

A few days ago, Center for Humanities Computing at Aarhus Universitet had the pleasure of inviting Interactive HPC Consortium colleagues from CLAAUDIA, Aalborg Universitet and the SDU eScience Center to a workshop day at the wonderful Moesgaard Museum.

“We have these collaborative workshops every six months to stay informed and improve the Interactive HPC service, but also to stay connected with what we consider to be close colleagues from the other two universities.
Meeting up in person adds an essential layer to this cross-university collaboration, positively impacting the operation and development of the DeiC Interactive HPC facility. Through these gatherings, innovations are cultivated collectively among partners, each contributing their unique perspective. Given the consistently productive outcomes of these workshops resulting in several working groups that tackle delegated tasks in the coming months, we are considering expanding to a two-day workshop next time to facilitate more in-depth discussions and collaboration,” says Kristoffer Nielbo, Director of Center for Humanities Computing.

This recent workshop hosted no fewer than 25 people who convened to discuss the general status, infrastructure, education, and branding of DeiC Interactive HPC. The day concluded perfectly with a visit to the exhibitions at Moesgaard Museum and its grounds. Everyone looks forward to the next Interactive HPC workshop hosted by CLAAUDIA in wonderful Aalborg.

Categories
Teaching Workshop

CodeRefinery workshop March 21-23 and 28-30, 2023

Course goals

In this course, you will become familiar with tools and best practices for scientific software development. This course will not teach a programming language, but we teach the tools you need to do programming well and avoid common inefficiency traps. The tools we teach are practically a requirement for any scientist who needs to write code. The main focus is on using Git for efficiently writing and maintaining research software.

Audience

Do you identify with any of these below, then this course is for you:

  • You write scripts to process data.
  • You change scripts written by your colleagues.
  • You write code that is used in research by you or others.
  • You wish you could re-run your own code after a few months.
  • You wish you could reproduce your own results better.
  • You wish you could automate your work better.
  • You, or your group, can’t share or reuse code.
  • You overall want to become more efficient at your work, by using the best possible tools.

Registration

The workshop will be held on March 21-23 and 28-30, 2023

Go to the CodeRefinery workshop webpage for more information and registration.

About CodeRefinery

CodeRefinery acts as a hub for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) software practices. It currently focuses on the Nordic/Baltic countries, but aims to expand beyond this region. CodeRefinery aims to operate as a community project with support from academic organisations.

CodeRefinery is a project within the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC). NeIC is a joint initiative between the Nordic countries, and the NeIC Board based on nominations by the national e-infrastructure provider organisations. These strategic partner organisation are CSC (Finland), SNIC (Sweden), Sigma2 (Norway), DeiC (Denmark), RH Net (Iceland) and ETAIS (Estonia).

Categories
DeiC Event Supercomputing UCloud Workshop

DeiC Interactive HPC Back Office workshop

On May 10th, the SDU eScience Center was visited by colleagues from Aarhus University and Aalborg University for a Back Office workshop in the DeiC Interactive HPC consortium. The DeiC Interactive HPC Back Office collaborates on the development and operation of the facility. 

The overall topic of the workshop was “Developing UCloud apps” and discussion points included development tools, development workflow, deployment of apps on UCloud, to name a few. 

“The main focus of the workshop was to share our knowledge and experience in developing applications for UCloud with other members of the consortium. During the lessons we took a specific use case to demonstrate all the steps of the app development workflow, doing a live coding session with all the participants

Emiliano Molinaro, team leader for the user support team at the SDU eScience Center.

This is an excerpt. Click here for the full story.

Categories
Event Workshop

Participant reflections on data(Tinget) and using UCloud

By the end of 2021, students and staff interested in digital methods, data wrangling, text and data mining from Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen were once again invited to join the annually recurring datasprint organised by The University Libraries at The Royal Danish Library (Det Kgl. Bibliotek).

With the purpose of developing competencies within the field of digital humanities, the datasprint focused on the importance of open political data and the potential of text and data mining in this context.

Large historical data sets were made available to the participants as raw material to explore using the cloud based Interactive High Performance Computing service, UCloud, developed for Danish Universities. A hybrid group of staff from Center for Humanities Computing Aarhus (CHCAA) and students from Information Science, Aarhus University participated in the datasprint in Aarhus (November 18th and 19th) and gained experience with applying UCloud in their work with large datasets.

Benefits of UCloud

High Performance Computing systems (HPC), colloquially referred to as ‘super computers’, are characterised by their immense amount of computing power that far surpasses the abilities of regular desktop computers.

With the cloud based service UCloud, though, complex HPC systems are made accessible for researchers and students even when working with large datasets on laptops.

According to the participants from CHCAA, Aarhus University one main advantage of working with UCloud at the datasprint was the efficiency gained from the use of UCloud as it inflicts more computer power and works faster than similar systems. The ability to process large amounts of data in a relatively short amount of time is also described as a significant feature of UCloud next to its intuitive interface and easy error recovery.

The value of UCloud in the datasprint

UCloud formed an important tool at the datasprint in Aarhus as the topic of the datasprint involved a considerable amount of data, that is the complete collection of Folketinget’s proceedings from 1953 to 2021.

A notable challenge working with the large dataset from the Danish parliament was that only contemporary data from the 2000’s onwards had already been categorised into subjects, a challenge that the participants from our hybrid group sought to solve in order to favour the conditions for analysing the dataset.

By creating a new classifier for the old datasets lacking categories of subjects, the dataset will thus become more accessible and available for further analyses: We’re working with only 20 subjects, so it is very generic …like economy, labour, foreign affairs.

– Jan Kostkan, Center for Humanities Computing, Aarhus University

A broader comprehension of the dataset from Folketinget can thus be gained, and the group found a way to categorise the proceedings making them available for further analyses by experts with subject-matter knowledge, for example historians.

Evaluating the datasprint

UCloud thus served a valuable tool at the datasprint in Aarhus this November. All four participants unanimously agree that UCloud contains significant advantages when it comes to working with large datasets as in the datasprint, mainly because UCloud has more computer power and works faster than other systems.

One specific quality of UCloud that is emphasised by the participants is its ability to support the collaborative working process as the system makes it easy to work with others, even on a distance. Apart from minor issues in the user interface, UCloud is generally commended for its usability, even for beginners, and both students and staff from the group stress the potential of including UCloud in teaching.

Read more about the Data(Tinget) datasprint

Categories
Event Workshop

Organizer reflections on data(Tinget) and using UCloud

For the majority of researchers and students of the humanities, digital methods are far from standard procedure, and this is exactly what initiatives such as the datasprints organised and financed by The Royal Danish Library hope to change.

The value of digital methods in the humanities is gradually becoming clearer across disciplines. However, as programming and coding seems far from the traditional methods of the humanities, work still has to be done to fully integrate digital approaches in both research and teaching across the humanities.

Making use of digital methods opens new opportunities for working with large amounts of data and identifying connections across material – something that would simply be impossible without the integration of digital methods into the humanities.

The vision behind data(Tinget)

At the end of 2021, two datasprints focusing on the value of open political data and digital competencies were organised in Aarhus (November 18th-19th) and Copenhagen (December 2nd and 3rd). Due to a close collaboration between DeiC Facility for Interactive HPC and The Royal Danish Library, the cloud-based HPC (High Performance Computing) service UCloud developed for Danish Universities presented itself as a pertinent topic for the 2021-datasprints. More specifically, the participants were asked to explore parliamentary proceedings from the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) from 1953 to 2021 by use of UCloud at the datasprints.

The purpose of the datasprints were thus twofold: creating awareness of the value of open political data, and finally developing the digital competencies of the students and staff participating from Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen. UCloud played a significant part in the latter – as the datasprints involved considerable amounts of data -despite initial concerns for the organisers:

What worried us the most during the preparations was how difficult it would be to get the participants connected to UCloud. And if they would be able to use it at all. It went completely pain-free though; a few emails and fairly simple clicks on UCloud (full disclosure – it wasn’t me who had to click, so of course it was simple to me). And then it was up and running. Only real challenge was a semi bad internet connection on the first day in Copenhagen. And when they [the participants, red.] got access – all problems were gone, and everything went smooth!

– Christian B. Knudsen, The Royal Danish Library

UCloud as a key figure

As soon as the participants were confidential with UCloud, some of the benefits of working with the HPC service were made clear for participants as well as organisers. Per Møldrup-Dalum, one of the organisers of the datasprint (currently working as data manager for Center for Humanities Computing Aarhus/CHCAA) specifically emphasises UCloud as a pivotal tool at the datasprints:

Imagine the hassle when students, researchers, journalists, etc. show up with an equal number of different laptop computers. Some are old, others new, some running Windows, others Macs or Linux. Some attendees have no problem discerning between different Python versions, while others have never heard of Python or R or installing arbitrary software on their computer. Now, all these people need to have the same version of e.g. RStudio, R, Python and software to work with computer code. To get that to work could require a complete datasprint in itself.

– Per Møldrup-Dalum, The Royal Danish Library/CHCAA

All of these technical obstacles, however, were completely erased thanks to UCloud:

Now, enter UCloud. There we control everything and can ensure that it all just works — from the get-go! On top of that, we don’t have to worry that much about data size or computational resources. It’s all win-win.

– Per Møldrup-Dalum, The Royal Danish Library/CHCAA

As these evaluations show, UCloud holds major potential, not only in the context of these specific datasprints, but for developing digital skills across the humanities on a broader scale; the cloud-based HPC service, UCloud, simplifies the working process and makes collaborative work much more manageable. Hopefully, events such as the datasprints organised by The Royal Danish Library will have a sustained impact on researchers as well as students whose interest in digital methods and UCloud specifically can further the development and integration of digital methods across the humanities in the future.

Read more about the Data(Tinget) datasprint in Aarhus and the use of UCloud from the participants’ point of view.