Category Archives: Training Opportunities

Second LAC Scientific Data Management Workshop: Call for Abstracts Extended and Online Registration Now Open!

Second Latin America and the Caribbean Scientific Data Management Workshop

This Workshop is convened by WDS, in collaboration with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the São Paulo Research Foundation, and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). It builds on the success of the First Latin America and Caribbean Workshop in 2018 that explored the data landscape in the region to understand the opportunities and challenges, and discussed how data initiatives could be supported by WDS. The Second Workshop will continue discussions on data management best practices for data repositories and on new trends and perspectives for scientific data systems. However, there will also be a greater emphasis on analyzing and finding concrete solutions to the technical, political, and infrastructure issues identified during the First Workshop.

We invite all researchers and scientists currently involved in scientific data management initiatives in the Latin American and the Caribbean region to present their experiences, research, operations, and projects or programmes at the Workshop. Abstracts for short oral presentations must be in English and should not exceed 3000 characters. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, 31 January Sunday, 16 February.

Registration

Online registration is now open. The process is managed by FAPESP, who officially invite you here to join us in São Paulo.

REGISTER FOR THE WORKSHOP

For more information on the Workshop, Call for Abstracts, and Registration, please see the Workshop website.

The CODATA Beijing 2019 Workshop Experience

Open Data is going to help launch more startups. It’s going to help launch more businesses … It’s going to help more entrepreneurs come up with products and services that we haven’t even imagined yet”. (The former US President Barack Obama, May 9, 2013).

This is our CODATA 2019, Beijing, China Story: Richard Rimiru, Neema Sumari, Simon Mulwa and Gilbert Mushi.

We are “The 4 Musketters from East Africa”, Two Tanzanian from Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Neema Sumari and Gilbert Mushi and Two Kenyans; Richard Rimiru from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and Simon Mulwa from Kenya Agricultral Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), at the time of writing.

The CODATA & CAS International Training Workshop on Scientific Big Data and Machine Learning was a great opportunity for us to work together along with other 21 other students from different countries in the world from different professional and academia backgrounds. The Training Workshop was amazing, we learned, practised and exchanged academic knowledge as well as building on our existing networks and expertise.

The workshop introduced us to various aspects of Scientific Big Data and Machine Learning with hands on experience: This has stimulated our sureness to start working with these concepts in our environments. We can now start looking into implementing Data science, Visualization, Machine learning and Artificial Neural Networks in our university curriculum & work environs.

The CODATA-CAS workshop in Beijing, China, in September 2019, was the best for us. We wanted to learn and meet new people, ideas and experience different cultures. We are thankfull to  CODATA and CAS for their genuine support in attaining these goals. It has been amongest the best experiences in our live’s. We created strong friendships that we hope we will be able to maintain over the next few years if not for lifetime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As our friend “Batzaya” from Mongolia Would Say, “Wakanda Forever”, Then we say “CODATA Foever”.

The main activites in the training workshop were spread into two weeks of both class room and hands on experience. To mention afew; Data Visualization at Peking University by Professor Xiaoru Yuan  was an outstading and novelty which really crowned the training workshop. We look into the future of experiencing some novelty again and again if given the chance.

At the closing session ceremony, Dr. Simon Hodson, Executive Director of CODATA, asked the participants: “so, what have you learned? and what will you do next?” What we have learned was the idea of Open Science and its FAIR Data Principles was a major key to workshop and Conference. We’ve learned different issues on why data can be shared, how it can be analyzed, which data has long term value as well as benefits of storing, protecting, sharing, and publishing data among research scientists. It’s true that most of the researchers would like their data to be publicly stored and accessible by other researchers, however, this is not easy for researchers who do not have clearly defined ways to do this, or do not know, how to make their data accessible to others. Knowledge of data management plans for the hosting research institutes is required to ensure that researchers can define ways to store their datasets in a publicly accessible way after their experiments and publishing are done. Once the research data is stored in a publicly accessible manner, it then needs to be preserved in a format which can be reused by other researchers. In this workshop, the courses that were taught were: Programming-in-R, Cloud Computing, UNIX Shell, ggplot2, Data Visualisation, SQL, Machine Learning, Data Science, Artificial Neural Networks, Particle accelerator, Research Computational Infrastructure, HOC and HTC, Research Data Management. These courses gave us very good skills and knowledge about Data Science which can help us to facilitate the sharing of data – it was great experience. The team understood why open access and data sharing is important in todays data space.

Lastly but not the least, was the wonderful arrangements done by Ms. Wang Ting in assisting us with any logistical challanges occurring during the practical sessions. This was an outstanding style from her.  It was one of the most enjoyable and informative moments of our lives.

Thanks to CODATA, and CAS for your support and as well as to all our fellow participants for making it possible and fun.

“We Meet, We Learn, We connect, We Fall in Love”
“The 4 Musketters from East Africa”.

Eurodoc participated in the 1st Data Steward School

This post is a syndicated copy of the one at http://eurodoc.net/news/2019/eurodoc-participated-in-the-1st-data-steward-school

Eurodoc Open Science ambassadors for France, Sothearath Seang (Policy Officer and Treasurer of Eurodoc) and Slovenia, Ana Slavec (Open Science Work Group Coordinator of Eurodoc) attended the Data Steward School that was held during the 4th edition of the CODATA-RDA Summer School for Research Data Science in Trieste, Italy on 5-16 August. The school is part of the FAIRsFAIR Initiative but unlike the previous editions of the summer school, this year’s edition included a pilot programme solely dedicated to data stewardship. Only five participants were selected to attend the program.

 

Data Stewards play an essential role in helping and accompanying researchers throughout the research process. They do so by providing information and guidelines about policy requirements, helping to implement the FAIR Data Principles and co-constructing a Data Management Plan (DMP). Data Stewards interact with many stakeholders including policy makers, researchers, data scientists, IT personnel and technicians. The FAIR data principles are a set of guidelines that aim to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of digital assets. A DMP is a document that provides information on how the data will be generated, its nature, how it will be stored and shared and the restrictions that are applied to it. There are online tools that help you assess the FAIRness of your data and create a DMP like for example the ARDC self-assessment tool and DMP Online.

During the first week of the programme, all participants followed a common learning curriculum. For the second week, data stewards had a different programme that covered topics such as Metadata, Persistent Identifiers, Data Discovery, DMPs, Repositories, Ontologies and Linked Data. As part of the programme, data stewards had to prepare a data stewardship action plan to implement in the next six months. For Sothearath and Ana, that will include sharing the experience with members of the Eurodoc Working Group on Open Science and Eurodoc Open Science ambassadors to motivate them to learn more about data stewardship. We highly recommend this programme to every data scientist, data steward and early-career researcher because it provides substantial knowledge and training in the foundational skills of Research Data Science, essential for conducting good research.

Sothearath Seang, Treasurer of Eurodoc

Conference on Smart Data, Smart Cities and Smart Governance during October 3 – 5, 2019

The International Conference on Smart Data, Smart Cities and Smart Governance being organised at CEPT University, Ahmedabad during October 3 –  5, 2019. This conference is an attempt to bring together Urban Stakeholders, information and communication technologies, and geospatial technologies experts under one umbrella for three days for exchanging ideas on ‘Smart City, ICT and Geospatial Technology based solutions for Smart Governance’. The brochure is attached herewith and more details of the conference is available on http://smartcities-cept.in/.

Download the conference flyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Innovative ways to help your organisation become more effective

Are you interested in the Research Infrastructures environment? Looking to enhance your knowledge and fine-tune your management skills? Apply now for an Executive MBA in Management of Research Infrastructures (30/9 deadline).

The Executive Masters in Management of Research Infrastructures is an international management development Programme tailored to the specific needs of Research Infrastructures. This Programme is designed to give experienced science professionals the skills and knowledge they need to take on greater managerial responsibilities.

Take the opportunity to improve your managerial skills attending the Full Master programme or single Modules, attending only specific courses on particular topics. You will have the chance to share your ideas with top scientists and managers in from all over Europe, such as Iain Mattaj (HT, Director General), Ivan Baines (MPI-CPG, Chief Operating Officer) and Jacques Demotes (ECRIN-ERIC).

More details: www.emmri.unimib.it/en

What can this Executive Masters offer you?

  • A global network of Research Infrastructure colleagues in similar leadership positions
  • An international Faculty composed by dedicated professors and acclaimed experts from research infrastructures
  • A better understanding of how Research Infrastructures in different countries are responding to common challenges
  • Greater awareness of your leadership strengths and weaknesses.
  • Innovative ways to help your organisation become more effective.

The Masters Programme gives you three alternative enrolment options:
A) FULL PROGRAMME

KEY FACTS

• Target: Executive
• Format: MBA Part-time 
• Duration: 18 months
• Number of places available: 35
• Language: English

Deadline for application: 30th September 2019
Admission results: 15th October 2019

Programme start date: 4th March 2020

Who should Apply ?

• Director Generals, Chief Operating Officers or their equivalent
• Recently appointed or upcoming senior managers
• Heads of National Nodes
• Heads of Finance and Administration, HR and Communication
• Middle management
• Representatives of funding bodies and ministries responsible for RI funding

B) OPEN PROGRAMME

KEY FACTS

• Target: Executive & Middle Management
• Format: Tailored Training 
• Language: English

Deadline for applications: More details on http://www.emmri.unimib.it/en/home-open-programme/

This format gives you the opportunity to take individual modules to develop specific expertise if the full Executive Master is not required. We are expanding the portfolio of open-enrolment modules for 2019-2020. We can help you finding the course that meets your needs: CONTACT US

C) TEAM APPLICATION

KEY FACTS

• Target: Executive & Middle Management
• Format: Tailored Training 
• Language: English

Deadline for application: 30th September 2019
Admission results: 15th October 2019

Programme start date: 4th March 2020

We offer Research Infrastructures the option to enter the Programme as an organisation and split the 12 modules among staff members according to their organisational needs. This option is not covered by a Master certificate.

The Research Infrastructure will be awarded with a Certificate of Excellence in Research Infrastructure Leadership, flagging it as an organisation that values staff development, thereby enhancing its attractiveness as an employer.

 

World Data System: Early Career Researcher Training Workshop 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbszine/9353420967/

Data Curation and Management: Current Achievements and Future Challenges

The management and curation of research data is a very timely topic. All researchers rely on data they have themselves collected or that are the outputs of previous studies. Moreover, researchers are increasingly required to organize the long-term storage and access of the data used to obtain their results. As such, data training is highly relevant to budding scientists as they embark on their careers!

With many thanks to the generous sponsorship of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), the World Data System of the International Science Council (WDS) is delighted to offer a Research Data Management (RDM) Training Workshop aimed at early career researchers and scientists (ECRs).

The Workshop will take place on 6–8 November 2019 at Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, France. Twenty-four (24) seats are available, for whom dormitory accommodation (FIAP) and meals will be covered. There is also limited funding available towards some participants travel costs. If more people apply than there are places available, selection of participants by the WDS Scientific Committee(WDS-SC) will be based upon their interest in the Workshop.

Apply Now!

Urban Data Science School from May 13 – May 23, 2019

This article was first published by instructors Dr. Shaily R. Gandhi and Felix Emeka Anyiam https://shailygandhi.github.io/UrbanDataScience2019/ – Shaily and Felix are both alumni of the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science.

The second summer school on Urban Data Science was conducted following the successful completion of the first summer school on Urban Data Science in 2018 which is an outcome of the collaboration which took place at The CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School in Trieste, Italy 2017. This year the course Urban Data Science was hosted by the Summer Winter School CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India from May 13 – May 23, 2019.

With the upcoming trend of data driven solutions for use at the central level for making city operations more efficient and effective; the next generation of city planners will need to be as comfortable using advanced simulation algorithms as it is with design. This course helped to address the challenges with poor use of available open data in decision making while keeping urban in focus. This summer school course had been modified to get students started with the basic data science components in a short span of 10 days. This year the course had an additional 4 days which helped in making more insightful results from the open data sets that the last years 6 days course. Open data sets allows for a deeper understanding of the urban dynamics and its associated challenges, allowing the students to have a firmer control over possible bias and therefore analysing and giving solutions for overcoming these observed challenges.

The course this year was carefully modified with the feedback of students from the previous summer school of 2018, keeping in mind that the 24 new intakes are from different backgrounds like planning, architects, civil engineer, geomatics and other disciplines from both bachelors and masters level who belonged to IT and non- IT backgrounds. The curriculum covered basics of Git and Git hub, where students got an extremely intense hand on practical experience in using the software and learning how to open up their projects on GitHub. More over Open Refine, R and excel was covered for data cleaning. The lessons of the basics of R were prepared by using the material of software carpentry lessons Programming with R, R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis and Geospatial Data workshop. The concepts were taken from various sources and the lessons were redesigned focusing on urban problems and analysis.

The school begun with students understanding the concepts behind setting-up their study objectives towards enhanced conceptualized Research titles and using techniques to develop a research theory, planning the area of their study, thus bearing in mind the type of data available from Open data sets to be captured, whether continuous, discrete, ordinal or nominal data and the different stages of statistical analysis that can be conducted in other to produce the expected outcomes. Knowledge on research methodologies and implementation of statistical application software’s to support data analysis was one of the vital goals of the course. The Statistical software package called “R” was used as it has become a very powerful and useful tool for the purpose of data cleaning, management, statistical analysis and data graphical visualization. When mastered, this application is user friendly and could reduce the time and efforts of the researcher, student and professionals. The word cloud below shows the number of technology students had explored during the summer school.

Urban Data Science Summer School 2019

Innovative teaching techniques like mixing theory and practical’s with real life examples were followed in this course as it had diverse students attending and it required a special attention to keep the whole class on the same pace. Despite the course being intense from morning 9:30am till evening 5:30pm, it was very motivating to see the students following up with the topics and catching up with the pace of the instructors. To better understand the various levels of the 24 students, we conducted a pre and post summer school survey which gave us an idea about how well the school has changed the perspective of the students for programming in R to being confident in using Git and OpenRefine. Daily feedback was taken from the students similar to the last years practice to enhance class activity decisions by tutors. Continuous constructive comments from the students made it more effective as the tutors were able to achieve the desired output by changing the teaching method according to the requirement of the students. This process of understanding the capability of the students was well appreciated and implemented.

Urban Data Science Summer School 2019 was well appreciated by the students and the outcomes of the course were very insightful with statistical evidence. The topics selected by the students and its frequency is shown in the below Word Cloud. Urban planning and decision making consists of insight—and this insights are collected and analysed using open data sets in other to know how things are in our environment today, which this course promoted deeply. The role of Urban Data Science is in enhancing Urban Planning and Policy-making with more data driven decisions which is in need at this time. The students of this summer school came up with wonderful insights and results. It was a great pleasure to receive outputs of the case study in various topics such as: Crime, the Economy, Education, Governance and Planning, Environment, Public Health, Road Accident, Sports, etc.

Urban Data Science Summer School 2019

Linda Reeba Koshy, a student of the summer school’s project was a case study on the Prevalence of Obesity among Socially Vulnerable Groups in the United States, with interesting results proving that Obesity is prevalent among Ethnic/Racial minorities, and that socioeconomic, racial factors influence obesity in children and the elderly. Also, persons from Low income households and lower educational levels were more likely to be obese due to their poor dietary choices. A second study on analyzing the performance of Indian states and union territories in terms of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for the year 2018 by Kavina Mehta recommended from the analysis that Law Enforcement and Policy Interventions should be the first steps towards enhancing Indian’s sustainable development targets along with political willingness. The study on the Understanding of the Pattern of Terrorist Attacks in India by Pooja Toshniwal, concluded that more number of attacks are happening in Jammu and Kashmir using various types of weapons. This analysis of attacks helps in understanding the pattern of attacks which could be used by defence to halt future attacks. Contribution of Education in Development of countries across the world by Surabhi Samant threw more light on some of the un-expecting factors about the literacy rate which is significantly affected by child marriage, child labour, and poverty. There is no significant impact on government expenditure which means it is not about spending money but also the implementation of the right mechanism. This would be contextual to every country and its economic status. The study also concluded that the literacy rate has a significant impact on Human Development and Happiness Index of a country, and moderate impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In principle, education not only encourages economic growth but also assures quality life and overall development of a country. Many more interesting studies were carried out under this course. In conclusion, the inclusion of Urban Data Science in the SWS curriculum is priceless, as it brought an exponential improvement in the scholastic learning of the participants towards their data and spatial analytics enhancement via visualization and performance.

Calls for Applications: OWSD PhD and Early Career Fellowships

OWSD is happy to announce that the 2019 Calls for Applications are now open for our two fellowship programmes, for PhD students and Early Career women scientists. We would like to ask your special assistance in helping OWSD to disseminate the Calls for Applications.

OWSD PhD Fellowship

The PhD Fellowship is offered to women scientists from Science and Technology Lagging Countries to undertake PhD research in the natural, engineering and information technology sciences at a host institute in another developing country in the South.

Costs covered include travel to the host country, tuition fees, board, accommodation and living expenses, and a special allowance for travel to international conferences. The programme is administered with funds generously provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and is offered in partnership with host institutes throughout the developing world.

Two types of fellowship are available:

  • full-time fellowship (maximum 4 years funding), where the research is undertaken entirely at a host institute in another developing country in the South.
  • sandwich fellowship, where the candidate must be a registered PhD student in her home country and undertakes part of her studies at a host institute in another developing country. The sandwich fellowship is awarded for a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 3 research visits at the host institute. OWSD particularly encourages candidates to consider the sandwich option, which allows them to earn the PhD in their home country while accessing specialist researchers and equipment abroad, at the host institute.

The full Call for Applications is attached here in both English and French, as well as a poster which can be printed and distributed at your institutes, or sent digitally. All information regarding the fellowship, including full eligibility and selection criteria, required application materials, and the link to the application form, can be found on the OWSD website at: 

https://owsd.net/career-development/phd-fellowship

Application materials are also available in French at: https://owsd.net/bourses-de-doctorat

The deadline for applications for this fellowship is May 30, 2019.

Questions regarding the fellowship may be sent to fellowships@owsd.net.

OWSD Early Career Fellowship

This Fellowship is a prestigious award of up to USD 50,000, generously provided by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and is offered to women scientists from eligible Science and Technology Lagging Countries (STLCs) who have completed their PhDs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects within the last 10 years and are employed at an academic or scientific research institute in one of the eligible countries. Early Career fellows are supported for two years to continue their research at an international level while based at their home institutes, to build up research groups that will attract international visitors, and to link with industry.

The fellowship provides funding for a wide range of expenses, including equipment, consumables, research visits, exchanges and programmes, teaching and assistance, information resources, product development and linking with industry, outreach, communications and networking, and other expenses. A full list of eligible expenses is available in the attached Call for Applications. Fellows will also take part in two training workshops on leadership and entrepreneurial skills.

All details regarding eligibility, specifications of the research projects, selection and how to apply are available at: https://owsd.net/career-development/early-career-women-scientists-ecws-fellowships

The deadline for completed online applications is April 30, 2019.

The official language for the application is English; however, all information about the programme will also be available in French shortly at: https://bit.ly/2IKPfRZ

Questions about this fellowship can be sent to earlycareer@owsd.net.

Upcoming Training offered by Center for Applied Geomatics (CAG), CRDF, CEPT University

The Centre for Applied Geomatics (CAG), CRDF at CEPT University engages in technology advisory, research, consultancy, and capacity building activities.

Please find the attachment for the training offered by the Center for Applied Geomatics in the month of February 2019.

Enriching my Learning by Helping Others at the CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Schools

Sara El Jadid has been a student then a helper at the CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Schools #DataTrieste and #DataSaoPaulo.  She has recently blogged about her experience on the Springer Nature Research Data Blog.
The CODATA-RDA School for Research Data Science is a valuable and very instructive initiative. The main goal is to provide foundational research data skills to early career researchers, prioritizing those from lower and middle income countries, but not excluding students from other parts of the world. …
 
I consider the experience gained by being involved with the CODATA-RDA Schools for Research Data Science as a very important and helpful step in my career as a young researcher. I am enrolling in a PhD in Bioinformatics – a contemporary and interdisciplinary field  that needs strong skills in “research data science”. It’s also a field where you have to interact with researchers and scientists from diverse area: biology, statistics, chemistry, physics, informatics to mention a few.