Acronyms, Activations, and 35°C – Highlights from the LSDS Division Retreat 2025
On 1 July 2025, the Large-Scale Data Science (LSDS) Division gathered for its annual retreat. For context: our team Earth System Data Exploration (ESDE) is part of LSDS, which is part of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC). Which is part of Forschungszentrum Jülich. Which is… well, let’s just say it’s layers on layers of acronyms. Like a very nerdy onion.
In an attempt to bring a bit of order to the abbreviation jungle, we met on what turned out to be one of the hottest days ever recorded at the location. The venue of choice: “Gut Alte Burg” – a former summer residence of the Counts of Jülich, nestled near the village of Altenburg. Thanks to its thick stone walls, we stayed cooler inside than the weather data we were discussing.
Among the topics on the agenda:
- Learnable polynomial, trigonometric, and tropical activations
- Modern training techniques for foundational LLMs in TrustLLM
- FAIR Jupyter workflows
- The evolving AI industry
- And our EU project WeatherGenerator – tackling the complexities of extreme weather and climate projections
All presentations were delivered with humour, insight, and scientific enthusiasm – creating an energised atmosphere where exchanging ideas came naturally. But behind every great retreat is a great team of organisers.
One of them, Till Hauer – researcher in our team WeatherAI and Mathematical Technical Software Developer (MaTSE) student – shared some insights from backstage:
“Booking the location turned out to be more time-consuming than expected. Finding three offers from different venues took ages. In the end, we went with last year’s place – it’s a castle, how could we not?
Summer scheduling was tricky too, with vacations clashing all over the place. Thankfully, we had last year’s checklist to fall back on.
We also organised speakers, confirmed the BBQ list, and came up with games – fun ones, not just ‘guess the acronym’. In the end, it was all about teamwork. That made it work.”
Thank you, Till and the whole organising team, for a fantastic day – one that showed science can be just as hot outside the data centre as it is inside.
