Today marks Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate the work of the acclaimed mathematician and writer. We can’t think of a better way to honour her in 2025 than by naming our LLM-driven, AI assistant after the person who first recognised that computers had applications beyond pure calculation. 

We created our training chatbot, Ada, to make it easier and more engaging for users to find the right on-demand training resources from our broad catalogue of training. It offers a dynamic, conversational way to explore materials, complementing traditional search with a more guided and interactive experience. It also improves accessibility by supporting users who may struggle to phrase effective queries, helping them quickly locate relevant content. In addition, by analysing user interactions, we can better understand common questions and knowledge gaps, which may provide valuable insights that will shape and strengthen our future training offerings.

Ada works 24/7, so no matter where you are in the world or at what time you have a question about bioinformatics, our training assistant will be there to navigate 300+ EMBL-EBI’s on-demand training resources and assist you on your learning journey.

To access Ada, log in to or register for your free EMBL-EBI Training account, type your question, and let Ada find the on-demand training content you need within seconds.

Image credit: Karen Arnott and Jeff Dowling/EMBL-EBI

This beta launch of our training assistant is trained on our on-demand content. We appreciate any feedback you can give to help us develop Ada further.

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Who was Ada Lovelace?¹

Born in 1815, Ada is the sole legitimate child of the infamous poet Lord Byron and his mathematics-loving wife Annabella Milbanke.

From childhood, Ada had a fascination with machines, often designing flying machines and reading scientific magazines of the era. In 1833, Lovelace’s mentor, the scientist Mary Somerville, introduced her to Charles Babbage, who had already attained considerable celebrity for his visionary and perpetually unfinished plans for gigantic calculating machines.

Lovelace was deeply intrigued by Babbage’s plans for a device he called the ‘Analytical Engine’, which was to combine the array of adding gears of his earlier ‘Difference Engine’ with an elaborate punchcard operating system. Although it was never built, the design incorporated all the essential elements of a modern computer.

Babbage and his assistants had sketched out many programs for his engine; Lovelace’s were the most elaborate and complete, and the first to be published, so she is often referred to as “the first computer programmer”.

The Analytical Engine remained a vision until Ada’s notes became one of the critical documents to inspire Alan Turing’s work on the first modern computers in the 1940s.

¹ Text taken from www.findingada.com