Certificates are not research, and I do not list them as if they were. Three from this year were still worth the time.
CS50x, Harvard (February)
CS50x starts at the bottom, with C, memory and data structures, before it gets to Python and the web. Those are the layers a framework hides, and the ones that decide whether a model fits on a Raspberry Pi.
Claude Certified Architect, Foundations, Anthropic (March)
Most of what I build now involves LLM agents. I scored 944 out of 1000 on the Foundations exam and also hold the early-adopter credential.
Neo4j Certified Professional, and Neo4j & Generative AI (September)
The two hackathon systems I was happiest with this year, at Agentathon and Hack-Nation, both kept their decisions as versioned records in a knowledge graph. These two certifications were the systematic version of what those builds taught me in a hurry.