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M

Speaker

Mike Taylor

3

talks

principal Hopkins Architects

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Talks & appearances

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Context Engineering with DSPy

AI agents need the right context at the right time to do a good job. Too much input increases cost and harms accuracy, while too little causes instability and hallucinations. Context Engineering with DSPy introduces a practical, evaluation-driven way to design AI systems that remain reliable, predictable, and easy to maintain as they grow. AI engineer and educator Mike Taylor explains DSPy in a clear, approachable style, showing how its modular structure, portable programs, and built-in optimizers help teams move beyond guesswork. Through real examples and step-by-step guidance, you'll learn how DSPy's signatures, modules, datasets, and metrics work together to solve context engineering problems that evolve as models change and workloads scale. This book supports AI engineers, data scientists, machine learning practitioners, and software developers building AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, and multistep reasoning workflows that hold up in production. Understand the core ideas behind context engineering and why they matter Structure LLM pipelines with DSPy's maintainable, reusable components Apply evaluation-driven optimizers like GEPA and MIPROv2 for measurable improvements Create reproducible RAG and agentic workflows with clear metrics Develop AI systems that stay robust across providers, model updates, and real-world constraints

Prompt Engineering for Generative AI

Large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have unprecedented potential. Because they have been trained on all the public text and images on the internet, they can make useful contributions to a wide variety of tasks. And with the barrier to entry greatly reduced today, practically any developer can harness LLMs and diffusion models to tackle problems previously unsuitable for automation. With this book, you'll gain a solid foundation in generative AI, including how to apply these models in practice. When first integrating LLMs and diffusion models into their workflows, most developers struggle to coax reliable enough results from them to use in automated systems. Authors James Phoenix and Mike Taylor show you how a set of principles called prompt engineering can enable you to work effectively with AI. Learn how to empower AI to work for you. This book explains: The structure of the interaction chain of your program's AI model and the fine-grained steps in between How AI model requests arise from transforming the application problem into a document completion problem in the model training domain The influence of LLM and diffusion model architecture—and how to best interact with it How these principles apply in practice in the domains of natural language processing, text and image generation, and code

The UVA School of Data Science was formed in September 2019 and has since grown in its collaborations, partnerships, program offerings, and teaching and research personnel. We are now constructing a new facility that will house the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia.

The new building is in the first phase of development and, once complete, will link the University's Central Grounds with the athletic fields and North Grounds. The 60,000-square-foot building is the future home of the UVA School of Data Science and will serve as the gateway to the new Emmet-Ivy Corridor and the Discovery Nexus.

This bonus episode is a conversation between UVA architect Alice Raucher and Mike Taylor, a principal with Hopkins Architects. Both Alice and Mike have been instrumental in the building’s design. Alice has also played a key role in the development of the Ivy Corridor. Mike and Alice take a deep dive into the thought process behind the building’s design, its relationship to the University and its history, the land's unique topography, and its significance to future projects along the Ivy Corridor. 

Links:

Hopkins Architects

School of Data Science New Building Website