NLP Seminar Autumn 2024

This seminar offers a conceptual and practical introduction into modern Natural Language Processing (NLP). The course is structured around a series of lectures, each centered on a seminal publication and featuring presentations by academic guest speakers. The covered NLP techniques include the latest advancements such as transformer architectures, BERT, Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), alongside foundational methods like Bag-of-Words (BoW), TF-IDF, word2vec, and LSTM.
 
Prior to each session, students are required to read a designated research paper and prepare a critical question for discussion. This engagement will deepen understanding and foster analytical skills. Additionally, each participant will undertake a personal project in the realm of NLP, culminating in a final presentation that demonstrates their applied knowledge and insights. This seminar is mandatory for all students conducting a bachelor or master thesis at the Research Center for Digital Sustainability.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will …

• have developed your presentation skills
• have planned, executed and presented a project in the field of NLP
• know the most important methods of NLP
• be able to understand papers in the field of NLP
• be able to understand and critically comment on presentations of your fellow students