AI for Research: Key Insights
Listen to highlights and extended discussion on leveraging AI tools for academic research.
Workshop Video
Watch an explanation video of the workshop
Main Takeaways
Research Workflow Boost
Use AI across the pipeline: scoping, literature review, experiment design, analysis, writing, and dissemination—while preserving human judgment.
Evidence over Output
Ground every AI output with citations, data checks, and reproducible prompts. Treat models as assistants, not authorities.
Ethics & Compliance
Respect data protection, confidentiality, and IP. Document risks, model limitations, and decision logs for auditability.
Right Tool for the Job
Combine general models with domain tools (papers, code, data) and automation to achieve speed, quality, and traceability.
Suggested AI-Enhanced Workflow
Define the question
Establish scope, constraints, and success criteria for your research.
Map the landscape
Search, cluster, and summarize literature with citations.
Design methods
Draft protocols, data schemas, and evaluation plans.
Build & analyze
Code generation, data cleaning, EDA, and model baselines.
Validate
Unit tests, replication prompts, peer review, and bias checks.
Communicate
Structure papers, visuals, and abstracts; generate lay summaries.
Recommended Tool Stack
Reasoning Models
Ideation, planning, critique, and code suggestions with transparent prompting.
Literature & RAG
Paper search, citation-grounded summaries, and context retrieval from your corpus.
Dev & Data
Notebooks, linters, unit tests, data cleaning, EDA, and plotting automation.
Governance
Checklists for privacy, IP, bias, and reproducibility; documentation templates.
Ethics, Risks & Guardrails
- Use institution-approved tools for sensitive data; avoid uploading confidential content to public models.
- Maintain a prompt log and dataset versions to enable verification and replication.
- Clearly label AI assistance in methods and acknowledgements; cite sources rigorously.
- Assess model limitations and potential harms; apply human-in-the-loop review for critical decisions.