Lorena A Barba

A week has passed since I got back from the SciPy Conference in Tacoma, WA, delighted as usual by the experience. | Lorena A. Barba A week has passed since I got back from the SciPy Conference in Tacoma, WA, delighted as usual by the experience. I had skipped it last year, weary of crossing the whole continent for the event. But I...

Had a hallway conversation at #SciPy2025 about #GenAI in coding education → one week later, a (partial) solution is shipped in @googlecolab.bsky.social 🤯

The magic of conference serendipity never gets old. Longer post with story on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Presentation slides for my talk yesterday at #SciPy2025

Barba, Lorena A. (2025). Embracing GenAI in Engineering Education: Lessons from the Trenches. figshare. Presentation. doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

YouTube video by Lorena Barba Jekyll and GitHub Pages basic tutorial

Here's a practical intro for anyone who values simplicity, openness, and wants to build their own online presence the #OpenSource way.

Full tutorial (~40 min): youtu.be/j-tXer7dIes

I did a hands-on tutorial for easily creating a static website using #Jekyll and #GitHub Pages. No local installations—everything is done directly on @github.com!
Follow along to:
– Fork a Jekyll theme
– Deploy with GitHub Actions
– Edit the content
– Solve issues with #GitHubCopilot
(link in reply)

You can read all about my #GenAI adventures (and misadventures) here: doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...
Let's chat – what are YOU seeing in your classrooms? #teaching #python #highered

Key takeaway: We have to adapt. AI isn't going away. We need to find the line between helpful tool and crutch. And share our failures, not just our successes. It requires courage!
#genAI #learninginpublic

Tried to adjust the exam format, and the students revolted. 😬 It highlighted a key issue: are our assessments valid in the age of AI?
What now? I've scrapped homework and exams (yes I did!) and moved to in-class, collaborative exercises. It's better, but still a WiP…

The "illusion of competence"—that's when learners think they understand, but the knowledge isn't really sticking (like what happens after a "clear lecture"). AI gave them quick answers, but they didn't actually get the concepts. Sound familiar?

I really thought providing an AI tool trained on course materials (via RAG) would be a game-changer. Instead, students started using it to bypass actual learning. Attendance tanked. Class dynamics broke down as I tried to remedy learning loss…

I just released a preprint reporting on my experiment with generative AI in my Engineering Computations course. TL;DR: It was a mess. The biggest issue? The "illusion of competence."
#GenAI #education #edtech

Sorry to hear your grant was terminated 😕

The WH text plagiarized you?

The "Source code Harmonization And Reuse in Information Technology Act or the SHARE IT Act" requires agency contracts for custom-development of software to acquire and exercise rights sufficient to allow government-wide access, sharing, use, and modification #GWOSCON
www.congress.gov/bill/118th-c...

Amazing keynote showing how open source software can help deliver better health outcomes for America!
#GWOSCON

#OpenSource software is more secure! In 2024/25, the CMS OSPO partnered with CISA to ran a bug bounty: 200 vulnerabilities were submitted and 18 critical vulnerabilities identified and cleared. If exploited they would have cost millions of dollars!

Photo of Andrea Fletcher on the stage

Day 2 of the #GWOSCON launches with keynote speakers Andrea Fletcher and Remy DeCausemaker, leaders of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services OSPO

Paul Barrett began advocating for the use of #Python in astronomy while working at Goddard Space Flight Center. In his talk, "The Early Years of Scientific Python," he notes that key to scientific Python was the slicing or indexing syntax, enabling multi-dimensional arrays! 🚀
#GWOSCON

Academic incentives prioritize public citations IP and licensing confusion "That's not my job" mindset Working in public, version control

Inessa Pawson from Open Teams highlights the barriers for participation in open source software within academia

Slide showing logos of many OSS projects

Open source software used by NASA
#GWOSCON

Starting now! So excited for our inaugural #GWOSCON
Dean Geneva Henry welcoming everyone with optimism about the role of #OpenSource in our university. Inspiring!

There's still time to book your free ticket for GW OSCON from March 24-25 next week.

Register: go.gwu.edu/oscon

#opensource #academicOSS #openscience #openresearch

[scan of old text] March 2, 1867. CHAP. CLVIII. — An Act to establish a Department of Education. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there shall be established, at the city of Washington, a department of education, for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems, and methods of teaching, as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country.

March 2, 1867.

CHAP. CLVIII. — An Act to establish a Department of Education.
"…for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories."

I have given a talk about this paper at a workshop yesterday! Here are the presentation slides:
— Barba, Lorena A. (2025). Verification and Validation for Trustworthy Scientific Machine Learning. figshare. Presentation. doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

The first talk "Leveraging machine learning techniques to support planning and emergency response management for storm surge risk" by Prof. Alex Taflanidis (Univ. of Notre Dame) was a revelation. Surrogate models for the win!
Side note: this important work was supported by NOAA, whose data is key.

Bias, Diversity, Backlash, Manifestos, and Rebuttals Have you ever been in a meeting where a colleague says “I’m a great supporter of gender equality, but I’m totally opposed to quotas!” Or…

You are too kind!
It's complemented by a post on Medium from around the same time: medium.com/code-like-a-...

I'm at the "Uncertainty Quantification and Trustworthy AI Algorithms for Complex Systems and Social Good" workshop" at the Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation, IMSI, in Chicago. Should be fun!
(Funded by NSF.)
#UQ #AI #TrustworthyAI
www.imsi.institute/activities/u...

Verification and Validation for Trustworthy Scientific Machine Learning Scientific machine learning (SciML) models are transforming many scientific disciplines. However, the development of good modeling practices to increase the trustworthiness of SciML has lagged behind ...

📣New paper alert:
"Verification and Validation for Trustworthy Scientific Machine Learning"
We propose 16 recommendations to establish trust in #SciML models through rigorous V&V practices adapted from computational science:
arxiv.org/abs/2502.15496
#MachineLearning #ComputationalScience

YouTube video by Lorena Barba Linear Regression in Python with Jupyter Notebooks

youtu.be/_7Kp33xuzW8
Part 2, Linear Regression in Python with Jupyter—includes how to compute mean values using both custom functions and NumPy's built-in functions, obtaining regression coefficients, and how to calculate and visualize the best-fit line
#EngineersCode

YouTube video by Lorena Barba Introduction to linear regression, Part 1 (Engineering Computations with Jupyter)

youtu.be/zQtU8WIaYzg
Part 1 of a lesson on simple linear #regression with real data of earth temperature over time.

Bonus: how to create beautiful equations in #Jupyter with LaTeX and Mathpix

#EngineersCode

YouTube video by Lorena Barba Understanding Python Functions: Definition, Scope, Local and Global Variables Explained

youtu.be/2M5kSM3PVug
#Python functions: basic concepts and syntax, use of the 'def' keyword, importance of docstrings; difference between local and global variables and how variable scope can affect your code. Practical examples & tips to avoid common pitfalls for beginners.