Workshop- Building a RAG AI Assistant for Your Research

📅 Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 December 2026

🕙 10:00 am–15:00 pm both days

📍 Vislab, MCS 1022, Department of computer and mathematical sciences, Durham University

👥 Only 20 places · (including 10 travel bursaries of £500)·

**Registration required

Generic AI chatbots can’t see your research, and when they don’t know, they often make something up. This workshop shows you how to build your own AI assistant that answers questions from your papers, reports, notes and technical documentation, and backs every answer with the sources it used.

You’ll learn Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), working hands-on with open language models served through Ollama on DiRAC research-computing testbeds. By the end you’ll have a working local assistant built on your own documents.

What you’ll cover

• Preparing and ingesting research documents
• Text extraction, chunking and embeddings
• Vector search and retrieval
• Connecting retrieved evidence to an open language model
• Prompt design and citation-aware responses
• Evaluating retrieval quality, answer faithfulness and citation accuracy
• Responsible use: privacy, intellectual property and research integrity

Who it’s for
Researchers at any career stage, from any discipline and technical background. No machine learning experience is needed.

What you’ll need

• Basic Python: you can run a Jupyter notebook and follow simple code.
• Must: Your own laptop.
• A small collection of your own documents (optional; example documents will be provided).

Participants will access the DiRAC testbeds over SSH. Account setup instructions and a short preparation pack will be sent after registration, and helpers will be on hand throughout the practical sessions.

Bursaries available
We are offering 10 bursaries of £500 each to support attendance. To be considered, please complete the bursary section of the registration form. Bursaries will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, so early registration is encouraged.

Registration is required. Places are limited.

Contact: Dr Fawada Qaiser