Community/training

HPLT & NLPL Winter School on Large Language Models: Creation, Customization, Evaluation, and Use

Background

Since 2023, the NLPL network and Horizon Europe project High-Performance Language Technologies (HPLT) have joined forces to organize the successful winter school series on Web-scale NLP. The winter school seeks to stimulate community formation, i.e. strengthening interaction and collaboration among European research teams in NLP and advancing a shared level of knowledge and experience in using high-performance e-infrastructures for large-scale NLP research. The 2024 edition of the winter school puts special emphasis on NLP researchers from countries who participate in the EuroHPC LUMI consortium. For additional background, please see the archival pages from the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2023 NLPL Winter Schools.

For early 2024, HPLT will hold its winter school from Sunday, February 4, to Tuesday, February 6, 2024, at a mountain-side hotel (with skiing and walking opportunities) about two hours north of Oslo. The project will organize group bus transfer from and to the Oslo airport Gardermoen, leaving the airport at 9:30 on Sunday morning and returning there around 17:30 on Tuesday afternoon.

The winter school is subsidized by the HPLT project: there is no fee for participants and no charge for the bus transfer to and from the conference hotel. All participants will have to cover their own travel and accomodation at Skeikampen, however. Two nights at the hotel, including all meals, will come to NOK 3745 (NOK 3345 per person in a shared double room), to be paid to the hotel directly.

Programme

The 2024 winter school will have a thematic focus on Large Language Models: Creation, Customization, Evaluation, and Use. The programme will be comprised of in-depth technical presentations (possibly including some hands-on elements) by seasoned experts, with special emphasis on open science and European languages, but also include critical reflections on current development trends in LLM-focussed NLP. The programme will be complemented with a panel discussion and a ‘walk-through’ of available infrastructure on the shared EuroHPC LUMI supercomputer.

Confirmed presenters include:

• Afra Alishahi, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
  
• Desmond Elliot, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  
• Aurélie Névéol, Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Numerical Sciences, France
  

Sunday, February 4, 2024
13:00	14:00	Lunch
14:00	15:30	Session 1
15:30	15:50	Coffee Break
16:00	17:30	Session 2
17:30	17:50	Coffee Break
17:50	19:20	Session 3
19:30		Dinner

Monday, February 5, 2024
Breakfast is available from 07:30
09:00	10:00	Session 4
Lunch is available between 13:00 and 14:30
15:00	16:30	Session 5
16:30	16:50	Coffee Break
16:50	17:40	Session 6
17:40	18:00	Coffee Break
18:00	19:30	Session 7
19:30		Dinner
21:00		Evening Session

Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Breakfast is available from 07:30
08:30	10:00	Session 8
10:00	10:30	Coffee Break
10:30	12:00	Session 9
12:30	13:30	Lunch

Registration

In total, we anticipate up to 60 participants at the 2024 Winter School. Please register your intent of participation through our on-line registration form. We will process requests for participation on a first-come, first-served basis, with an eye toward regional balance. Interested parties who have submitted the registration form will be confirmed in three batches, on December 8, on December 15, and on December 22, which also is the closing date for winter school registration.

Once confirmed by the organizing team, participant names will be published on this page, and registration will establish a binding agreement with the hotel. Therefore, a cancellation fee will be incurred (unless we can find someone else to ‘take over’ last-minute spaces), and no-shows will be charged the full price for at least one night by the hotel.

Logistics

With a few exceptions, winter school participants travel to and from the conference hotel jointly on a chartered bus (the HPLT shuttle). The bus will leave OSL airport no later than 9:30 CET on Sunday, February 4. Thus, please meet up at 9:15 and make your arrival known to your assigned ‘tour guide’ (who will introduce themselves to you by email beforehand).

The group will gather near the bus and taxi information booth in the downstairs arrivals area, just outside the international arrivals luggage claims and slightly to the right, as one exits the customs area: The yellow dot numbered (17) on the OSL arrivals map. The group will then walk over to the bus terminal, to leave the airport by 9:30. The drive to the Skeikampen conference hotel will take us about three hours, and the bus will make one stop along the way to stretch our legs and fill up on coffee.

The winter school will end with lunch on Tuesday, February 6, before the group returns to OSL airport on the HPLT shuttle. The bus will leave Skeikampen at 14:00 CET, with an expected arrival time at OSL around 17:00 to 17:30 CET. After stopping at the OSL airport, the bus will continue to central Oslo.

Organization

The 2024 Winter School is organized by a team of volunteers at the University of Oslo, supported by a programme committee from the NLPL network and beyond, please see below. For all inquiries regarding registration, the programme, logistics, or such, please contact hplt-training@ifi.uio.no.

The programme committee is comprised of:

• Isabelle Augenstein (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Emily M. Bemder (University of Washington, USA)
• Kenneth Heafield (Edinburgh University, UK)
• Jindřich Helcl (Charles University, Czech Republic)
• Marco Kuhlmann (Linköping University, Sweden)
• Per Egil Kummervold (National Library of Norway)
• Andrey Kutuzov (University of Oslo, Norway)
• Joakim Nivre (RISE and Uppsala University, Sweden)
• Stephan Oepen (University of Oslo, Norway)
• Sampo Pyysalo (University of Turku, Finland)
• Gema Ramirez (Prompsit Language Engineering, Spain)
• Anna Rogers (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
• Magnus Sahlgreen (AI Sweden)
• David Samuel (University of Oslo, Norway)
• Jörg Tiedemann (University of Helsinki, Finland)
• Erik Velldal (University of Oslo, Norway)