Demystifying Large Language Models: How Transformers Actually Work

Room SH-403 at University of Duisburg-Essen, 70 Schützenbahn, Essen, 45127

GDG on Campus University of Duisburg-Essen - Essen, Germany

Discover how Large Language Models work by building them step by step.

Aug 18, 3:00 – 5:00 PM (UTC)

20 RSVP'd

RSVP

Key Themes

AIBuild with AIWorkshop / hands-on session

About this event

Discover how Large Language Models work by building them step by step. Starting with a simple bigram language model, we'll introduce embeddings, neural networks, self-attention, and the Transformer architecture through interactive coding and visual explanations. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clear understanding of the core concepts behind modern LLMs and how they are trained.

Eman Elrefai, an Applied Scientist at Microsoft and author of six published papers on NLP, will host a hands-on workshop on LLMs, exploring how the current AI boom became possible.

Bring your laptop and join us!

When

When

Tuesday, August 18, 2026
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM (UTC)

Speaker

  • Eman Elrefai

    Applied Scientist & NLP Researcher

Organizers

  • Lennart Kosova

    App Akademie

    GDGoC Organizer

  • David Munstein

    Dev & Organization

  • Lilly Marie Brinkmann

    Design & Photography