SBD2024 - SoBigData 2024 Summer School
EMPOWERING DATA FOR SOCIAL GOOD

BASIC INFO
Dates: Sunday 16 June 2024 – Friday 22 June 2024
Location: Baratti, Tuscany (Italy)
Link: https://summerschool2024.sobigdata.eu

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

--Call for Participation—

Abstract: Data science and artificial intelligence (AI) play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. AI and its applications are essential tools for the advancement of our multicultural and interconnected society. However, the utilization of these technologies necessitates a thoughtful examination of the ethical and legal dimensions governing data use. The "Empowering Data for Social Good" school is designed to acquaint participants with pivotal subjects, including data governance and trustworthy AI, with a particular focus on applications related to health and sustainable development. To give students the opportunity to actively participate, the school is organized in two sections: the morning sessions feature presentations by accomplished experts, each specializing in the varied topics covered. Concurrently, the afternoon sessions are dedicated to collaborative group projects, allowing students to actively engage in hands-on learning experiences. At the end of the week, a panel of experts in data mining and AI will evaluate the projects. The students will have the flexibility to self-organize their project work time, enabling interaction with tutors for guidance, inquiries, and discussions pertaining to project objectives. This approach ensures a comprehensive and interactive learning environment allowing the participants to explore the ethical, legal, and practical dimensions of leveraging data for societal well-being.

TOPICS
Data Science
Artificial Intelligence
Trustworthy AI
Explainable AI
Neural Networks
Machine Learning
Data Governance
Health and Data
Sustainable Development

TARGET ATTENDEES
Postgraduate Students, PhD Students, Researchers, Social Scientists

ABOUT THE SCHOOL
The 2024 edition of the SoBigData summer school will focus on how data can be used for social good, and this topic will be explored around five different thematic areas: European Framework and Communities, Trustworthy and Ethical AI, Ecology and Green development, Health, Technology and AI.
Attendees will be given the possibility to work on personal projects with the support of tutors. These projects will then be evaluated by a dedicated panel at the end of the school. This organisational structure will allow attendees to benefit from broader key-note speeches, topic-based talks alongside sessions that will allow attendees to progress in a project of their own choosing by relying on tutors from different partners of the SoBigData Research Infrastructure.
The Summer School will also feature social events organised with the intent of promoting network creation among attendees and with speakers.

INVITED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
-Richard Rogers (https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/r/o/r.a.rogers/r.a.rogers.html) (University Professor at Universiteit van Amsterdam) holds the Chair in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He is also Director of the Govcom.org Foundation and the Digital Methods Initiative.
His keynote speech will be on Online Data Governance and risks.

-Alexander Barth (https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_9054334/en/directory?uid=U188141) (Associate professor at Université de Liège and senior research fellow at Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS) is part of the Department of Astrophysics, Geophysics and Oceanography at the Université de Liège. His research interests comprise Ocean modelling, data assimilation, meteorology, satellite data and climatology.
His keynote speech will be on Multivariate convolutional neural networks with error estimates to reconstruct missing data in satellite observations.

-Maryam Mehrnezhad (https://sites.google.com/view/maryammjd/home) (Senior Lecturer at Information Security Group, Royal Holloway University of London) Works on Emerging technologies, Usable security and privacy and Security standardisation by actively following the real-world practices of industry and policymakers (e.g., W3C and ICO).
Her keynote speech will be on Cybersecurity, Privacy, Trust, and Bias in Female-oriented Data and Technologies.

-Katharina Morik (https://www-ai.cs.tu-dortmund.de/PERSONAL/morik.html) (Professor of Computer Science at Technische Universität Dortmund) pioneer of Machine Learning, she has made a large number of fundamental research contributions that have been highly published, and has driven interdisciplinary, AI-based applications that have achieved significant economic and societal goals.
Her keynote speech will be on Resource Aware Machine Learning.

REGISTRATION
The fee for the summer school is €550 (early registration) until Tuesday 30 April 2024.
Late registration fee will be €700 between Wednesday 1 May 2024 and Friday 31 May 2024.

The registration fee comprises:
-Attendance to all summer school talks and sessions
-Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee breaks for all the duration of the school
-Participation to three social events
-Planting of a tree to offset carbon emissions
-Attendance certificate

To register for the school please fill this form http://tinyurl.com/rufu3a8v including a letter of motivation describing the project you’d like to work on while at the SoBigData Summer School.
Once you have filled and successfully sent this form, you will be contacted by the Summer School's organisation in order to finalise the fee payment. You will be officially enrolled once your payment has been validated by the School's administration.

SOCIAL PROGRAM
The social program is structured as follows:
- A welcome cocktail on Sunday evening 16 June 2024
- Visit to the award-winning Petra Winery (https://www.petrawine.it/en/home-english/): a guided tour of the vineyards and the winery designed by architect Mario Botta and a dinner with wine tasting.
- Visit to the marine protected and archaeological area of Baratti-Populonia (https://www.parchivaldicornia.it/en/archaeological-parks/archaeological-park-of-baratti-and-populonia/). Sunset from the scenic town centre of Populonia (https://www.visittuscany.com/en/towns-and-villages/populonia/).
- A dj-set night with pizza to celebrate the end of the school in an informal setting within the Poggio all’Agnello venue

VENUE
Nested in the gulf of Baratti on the “Etruscan Coast” in Tuscany (Italy), Poggio all’Agnello (https://www.poggioallagnello.it/en/) is a fully equipped resort that will host the 2024 edition of the SoBigData Summer school. The gulf of Baratti hosts the Archaeological Park of Baratti and Populonia (https://www.parchivaldicornia.it/en/archaeological-parks/archaeological-park-of-baratti-and-populonia/), with a necropolis and acropolis across a site that is considered one of the most relevant Etruscan cities, the only one whose remains are on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The park’s protected area stretches over 80 hectares and comprises some of the most beautiful beaches and coves in Tuscany. Moreover, the venue is located on the “Road of Wine and Oil” (https://www.lastradadelvino.com/en/), an itinerary that comprises some of Tuscany’s most refined wineries and oil productors. The region also hosts numerous food festivals (https://www.costadeglietruschi.eu/en/experience-eng/food-festivals-a-journey-through-the-flavours-of-the-etruscan-coast/) comprising a variety of local products.

The venue has:
-Fully equipped conference rooms
-Outside facilities for communal work in a 10 hectare-park
-An Olympic size swimming pool and two smaller swimming pools
-Facilities for children and families
-Services and activities such as bike rental, sport facilities and more (https://www.poggioallagnello.it/en/services-and-activities/)
-Access for those with impaired mobility
-An animal-friendly policy
-A restaurant that can accommodate menus for vegetarian, vegan, celiac and lactose-intolerant
-Free charge for electric vehicles and solar panel system

ACCOMODATION
The venue Poggio all’Agnello offers a variety of studio, one-bedroom and connecting apartments (https://www.poggioallagnello.it/en/apartments/). Some apartments can accommodate up to five individuals. The following is the price per night for each individual:
1 Individual: 90€ per night
2 Individuals: 45€ per night/each
3 Individuals: 33€ per night/each
4 Individuals: 28 € per night/each
5 Individuals: 24 € per night/each

TRAVEL
Poggio all’Agnello is a resort which is approximately one hour from Pisa Airport. From Pisa, the venue can be reached by car or by train, which stops in the nearby station of Populonia (https://www.thetrainline.com/en/stations/populonia).
Once at the Populonia train station, the venue is 500 metres away http://tinyurl.com/2x66rzn6

CARBON OFFSET
To promote a form of carbon compensation, the Summer School organisation will plant a tree for each attendee, via Treedom http://tinyurl.com/38awznkp . Treedom is a platform with over 1.2 million users that allows you to plant a tree from a distance and follow the story of the project online. Each attendee will be donated a tree in order to offset CO2 emissions.

GENERAL CHAIRS
- Mark Cotè (KCL - UK)
- Roberto Trasarti (ISTI-CNR)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
- Marco Braghieri (KCL - UK)
- Beatrice Rapisarda (ISTI-CNR)
- Valerio Grossi (ISTI-CNR)
- Michela Natilli (ISTI-CNR)

CONTACTS
beatrice.rapisarda@isti.cnr.it
marco.braghieri@kcl.ac.uk

SPONSORS
This event is supported by the European Union – Horizon 2020 Program under the scheme “INFRAIA-01-2018-2019 – Integrating Activities for Advanced Communities”, Grant Agreement n.871042, “SoBigData++: European Integrated Infrastructure for Social Mining and Big Data Analytics” (http://www.sobigdata.eu) and - NextGenerationEU - National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, PNRR) - Project: “SoBigData.it - Strengthening the Italian RI for Social Mining and Big Data Analytics” - Prot. IR0000013 - Avviso n. 3264 del 28/12/2021