Fundamentals of Deep Learning

The Competence Centre’s ITC Cluster proposes a two day workshop in collaboration with NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute (DLI).

Businesses worldwide are using artificial intelligence (AI) to solve their greatest challenges. Healthcare professionals use AI to enable more accurate, faster diagnoses in patients. Retail businesses use it to offer personalized customer shopping experiences. Automakers use it to make personal vehicles, shared mobility, and delivery services safer and more efficient.

Deep learning is a powerful AI approach that uses multi-layered artificial neural networks to deliver state-of-the-art accuracy in tasks such as object detection, speech recognition, and language translation. Using deep learning, computers can learn and recognize patterns from data that are considered too complex or subtle for expert-written software.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how deep learning works through hands-on exercises in computer vision and natural language processing. You’ll train deep learning models from scratch, learning tools and tricks to achieve highly accurate results. You’ll also learn to leverage freely available, state-of-the-art pre-trained models to save time and get your deep learning application up and running quickly.

Each participants will:

• Access workshops from anywhere with just your desktop/laptop computer and an internet connection. Each participant will have access to a fully configured, GPU-accelerated server in the cloud
• Obtain hands-on experience with the most widely used, industry-standard software, tools, and frameworks
• Learn to build deep learning and accelerated computing applications for industries, such as healthcare, robotics, manufacturing, accelerated computing, and more
• Gain real-world expertise through content designed in collaboration with industry leaders, such as the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Mayo Clinic, and PwC
• Earn an NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute certificate to demonstrate your subject matter competency and support your career gro

This course is based on NVIDIA’s DLI cloud infrastructure. Via only an internet browser, each participant gains access to a web teaching platform, an instance of the NVIDIA DIGITS Deep Learning framework, all running on state-of-the-art GPU hardware servers.

All participants will work on hands-on exercises, receiving realistic experience in training, deploying, and optimizing Neural Networks.

Day 1:

• 08:00-08:15: Introduction
• Handle prerequisites with participants (software, accounts, etc), explain the platform, agenda, goals, and schedule
• 08:15-10:15: The Mechanics of Deep Learning
• Explore the fundamental mechanics and tools involved in successfully training deep neural networks
• 10:15-10:30: Break
• 10:30-12:30: Pre-trained Models and Recurrent Networks
• Leverage pre-trained models to solve deep learning challenges quickly
• Train recurrent neural networks on sequential data

Day 2:

• 08:00-10:00: Final Project: Object Classification
• Apply computer vision to create a model that distinguishes between fresh and rotten fruit
• 10:00-10:30: Break
• 10:30-11:15: Advanced Neural Network Architectures
• Discuss advanced neural network architectures and recent areas of research where students can further improve their skills
• 11:15-11:30: Final Review & Closing remarks