UNIGE Data Science Day

UNIGE's Data Science Day 2020

The UNIGE's Data Science Days are a two-day scientific colloquium for UNIGE researchers, which will take place from June 10 to 11, 2021.

Each year, the CCSD also intends to lead a collective reflection on the deepening of a particular theme. As a common thread running through some of the activities organized by the Center, this theme is meant to be precise enough to favor a significant scientific contribution and a rich dialogue, but also transversal enough to allow interdisciplinarity.

For the first edition, the theme will be "Epidemics and (Big) Data: contributions and challenges of data science in the study of diffusion phenomena".

A first meeting on this theme will be organized on September 4, 2020 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Discover the program and watch the presentations of the 2020 edition >>

 

2020-21 Theme: Epidemics and (Big) Data

 

In many ways, the COVID-19 epidemic underscored the importance of access to quality data and relevant models in the understanding and management of epidemics. Data science has provided decisive tools, for example establishing projections of infectious chains in given populations, or even adapting the structural response of hospital environments.

Far from being limited to the domain of health alone, the study of diffusion and transmission has long been carried out through research questions fed by many disciplines. This notably applies to the study of the dissemination of fake news in the social sciences, the scientific interest in the effects of cross-asset contagion in economic sciences, the analysis of the expansion of certain animal species in biotopes in the life sciences, the energy transmission between atoms in science, or the study of international circulation and phenomena related to diffusion of cultural goods in human sciences.

Certain advanced statistical and computer-based approaches and methods used to study epidemic phenomena are thus developed, discussed and refined within an array of research projects confronting specific disciplinary questions, without their advances necessarily being shared between disciplines, even though this sharing could be fruitful.

Additionally , while the methods and tools of data science make it possible to refine the understanding of many complex phenomena of diffusion, their implementation - and this in particular in the case of the COVID-19 epidemic - ,  raises questions about how to produce and use said data, and about the size of the accessible datasets. On these questions, critical approaches developed within disciplines such as law, social sciences or ethics can prove indispensable to data science.

As part of its 2021 edition, “Data Science Impulse” grant and UNIGE's Data Science Days planned for the month of June thus propose to build on the experience of the COVID-19 crisis to initiate an interdisciplinary and critical reflection, on the one hand, on the innovative methods used in the study of phenomena related to dissemination and, on the other hand, on the legal, political, social, economic and ethical issues linked to the use of (big) data in the management of epidemics. In this perspective, the CCSD is launching a call for participation for the community of UNIGE researchers across all disciplines.