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Friday, October 16 | 10-11:30AM | ALK 452

How to Build Agents for Research

A Hands-on Technical Workshop for Researchers!

Generative AI is shifting from conversational chat to autonomous AI agents capable of planning, code execution, and tool integration. 

Hosted by CADS and led by Dr. Aniruddha Bora, this hands-on workshop guides research faculty through building, evaluating, and deploying research agents. Participants will move beyond marketing hype to explore live agent workflows, scientific computing applications, and critical failure modes in academic research.

Key Learning Objectives

  • Understand the technical mechanics of agentic AI (planning, tool use, memory, autonomy spectrum) vs marketing usage.
  • Literature synthesis, code generation, and experiment orchestration — where agents help vs. break.
  • Apply Writing, running, and debugging analysis code — managing hallucinated APIs, silent errors, and missing verification. 
  • Evaluation, reproducibility, token costs, context limits, and identifying when plain scripts beat agents.

Agenda (TBA)

  • 10:00 AM: Welcome & Intro
  • 10:30 AM