The BroadBand Tower Space Weather Forecast research group at Kyoto University is performing research on predicting solar activities that affect the human civilization every day, by applying Deep Learning technologies to a large amount of astronomical measurement data, collected in a cooperative effort between Kyoto University and people all over the world. (https://www.usss.kyoto-u.ac.jp/bbt.html)

The group has conducted a series of lectures on the prediction of space weather based on Chainer ((http://chainer.org), a Deep Learning framework developed by Preferred Networks. During the lectures, using an early access version of Chainer Playground, a Chainer environment that can be used via a web browser, the students can learn the basics of Deep Learning and the usage of Chainer without installing Python and the various numerical libraries used by Chainer on their laptops.

Takayuki Muranushi, adjunct lecturer at Kyoto University, commented: “This online self-studying environment is very helpful, since it does not require the environmental setup that usually takes a few weeks, and students can use it regardless of the operating system and performance of their laptops.”