DeepLabCut AI Residents 2023🐭: Meet our residents🚀

6 min readAug 1, 2023

Our second cohort of DeepLabCut (DLC) AI Residents has now completed the program✨!

Why are we here? Let’s spill the secret 👀!

In a world evolving around artificial intelligence, it’s critical that the digital revolution be as diverse as the people it serves. That being said, it’s no secret that the realm of open-source is often dominated by a specific subset of the population, limiting its perspective and its ability to resonate with everyone.

The mission🏋️‍♀️ of the DLC AI Residency program is to change this status quo. We believe that for AI to positively impact the world 🌍, the think tanks behind its design and implementation must reflect the diversity and richness of the human race.

Since 2022, CZI has been paving the way by giving grants for EOSS projects to include DEI initiatives. We were lucky enough to receive this funding, which supported founding the DLC AI Residency Program so far. Each year, we onboard 3 to 5 talented interns from underrepresented groups in computer science and summer☀️😎 becomes the coolest season at our labs🔬. Fresh ideas, boundless energy, and two months of hard-core tech — the perfect recipe for an epic summer.

Meet the 2023 DLC AI Residents!

The DeepLabCut AI Residents 2023 began their studies on June 1st, participating in a series of seminars and presentations featuring pioneers in the open source community, working collaboratively in an open source project, blogging weekly about their progress.

Meet our Residents 🔥🔥🔥

🌌✨ Stellar Beginnings & Future Aspirations: What sparked their journey in their field and what career milestones are on the horizon? 🚀🏁

Say 👋 to Rae. Her tech journey started with a computer science degree in the Philippines. But the real twist came during her master’s studies. As a seasoned diver and ocean buff, she combined her tech skills with her love for marine life. She designed a clever system to automate the tracking of fish🐟 in the wild. An impressive feat, right? Have a look at her publication HERE

But Rae wasn’t done there. She moved to Japan for her doctoral degree, diving headfirst into a new project. She’s now studying social behaviors of juvenile macaques🐒 using data from a remote Japanese island. It’s complex work, but the insights could reshape our understanding of macaque society.

Rae found DLC when she was looking for tools 🛠 to support her research. She quickly became a part of our community, and now, she has big plans for the future. She wants to use her tech prowess to develop powerful tools to help marine biologists, primatologists, and conservationists to explore, understand and protect nature🌲🐝🐒.

Welcome 😌 Anna. After earning her biology degree in Valencia, she dove into fields like histology, biochemistry, and microscopy. But it was neuroscience that really caught her interest. Anna discovered Python during the COVID-19 lockdown. She put her new coding skills to work, developing a DeepLabCut pipeline to help her research lab process behavioural data.

She didn’t stop there. Anna is currently pursuing a PhD in neuroscience, studying the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in the storage of social information in the hippocampus. For Anna, research is a canvas for creativity 🖼 and an endless journey of learning. She is fascinated by the brain 🧠, viewing it as the most complex and intriguing system in the universe 🪐.

In her future, she sees herself playing a pivotal role in the DLC community🐭, inspiring and enabling more people to harness the power of the software💻.

Introducing ➡️ Konrad, a seasoned DLC champion who’s been part of our community for years, always ready to lend a hand on our forums. If you’re curious about his earlier work with us, check out our previous blog post HERE, , where we had an engaging chat about his research.

This time, Konrad’s here because of his deep-seated love❤️ for open-source software. He’s aware of the resource crunch many labs face and the pressing need to support scientists🧪🔬 in their pursuit of knowledge. Konrad believes in creating avenues for efficient work, even with limited resources, and he sees open science and open-source software and hardware as fantastic solutions.

So, he signed up for the DLC residency program to learn the ropes of building, maintaining, and improving an open-source project. Here, he worked closely with the team, flexed his coding muscles💪, and gained invaluable insights into managing a large-scale project like DeepLabCut.

Going forward, he plans to experiment with more open tools🛠 and develop cost-effective yet potent solutions for scientists globally.

What did they do this summer?

First, they get to learn about the ins and outs of open-source software development and AI-based behavioral analysis. It's like a masterclass in all things 🆒 and tech. But we're not all theory and no action 💪. We then give them the opportunity to work on our big projects. They can use their newfound skills to solve real-world problems and gain hands-on experience.

The major project was focusing on helping with a major new addition to the DLC eco-system, a whole new PyTorch 🔥 SDK -- we will have a lot more to say about this by the fall, so stay tuned!

They have also been working on benchmarking and building new additions to the multi-animal DeepLabCut code base, and we are currently writing up a paper! 📝

From the Inside 👀: What’s the Most Exciting Part of the DeepLabCut Residency Program 2023, According to Our Residents?

✨ Dive headfirst into the world of open-source projects like DeepLabCut🐭. It’s a real-world lesson on starting and scaling up!

✨ It’s like a bootcamp for your coding muscles. The residency includes a series of coding seminars and resources, empowering you to kickstart projects across various scientific fields. Plus, it’s a great confidence booster to experiment with new tools🛠 and contribute code to the world of open science.

✨ Step outside your comfort zone and mingle with researchers from all walks of life. It’s an eye-opener to 💡different perspectives in research, and a chance to get a sneak peek into how other labs operate.

✨ An open platform for your questions, ideas, and solutions. Get ready for timely, constructive feedback that helps you steer your project in the right direction during the two-month program.

✨ Experience a collaborative, team-centric environment right in the heart of Europe 🌍. It’s all about working together and learning from each other.

But hey, It’s not all code crunching and data diving! We also know the importance of kicking back with a cold brew 🍻. After all, the best ideas often come when we’re just hanging out, don’t they?