Debugging (In)equality in Data Science

This workshop investigated the emancipatory potential of data science and aimed to foster camaraderie and collaboration between Doctoral Students and Early Career Researchers involved with or interested in computational methods for social sciences.

The event showcased cutting-edge data science that explores, exposes and tackles (in)equality. A founding principle was to facilitate this type of research and to support the development of junior scholars. Research grants were be available for two projects which aligned with the workshop principle.

Developed in partnership with the LSE Data Science Institute and the Alan Turing Institute Post Doctoral Enrichment Award, the event brought together key elements from LSE and beyond with the shared goal of reaching graduates, post-doctoral students, and early career researchers. This workshop provided insights and connections that will assist participants on their journey to mobilise data science research for social good.

Activities included:

• Research Grants Competition
• Oral presentations and round table discussions
• A3 poster fair (500 words excluding figures and bibliography)

Want to find out more? Some reflections on the event can be found here. Università Bocconi also published an article to congratulate one of their students, who won a research grant.

Industry Talks: Spatial Data Science
Organised by Dr. Elisabetta Pietrostefani

The spatial data science community is exponentially growing every year! Countless businesses and organisations need to ask important location-based questions to adapt to the new era we are living in.

These industry talks represented an opportunity for students to meet experts from the GIS and Spatial Data Science community working in both businesses and non-profit organisations. Students had the opportunity to hear about speakers’ work and ask questions about how they have analysed and modelled spatial data for companies, organisations, or other projects.

Find details of the events Lent Term 2022 programme below:

Joanne Hayek - Designer and interactive mapping coder
16 February, 15:00.

Focusing on sustainability and innovation, Joanne’s practice spans across scales and disciplines through a variety of projects that combine social entrepreneurship and academic research. In recent years, Joanne has ventured into the fields of digital design, programming and data science through community projects that explore real-time interactive mapping as a tool for sustainable co-planning. In 2020, in response to the Beirut blast, she co-designed and coded the digital platform Emerge Beirut offering users the possibility to share their actions in real-time to help coordinate the post-blast recovery efforts. In 2021, her work was exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale as part of the project Beirut Shifting Grounds, in which she presented a dynamic data visualization and mapping of the grassroots deployments taking place in Beirut since October 2019. In November 2021, Joanne co-curated Shape Your City, an interactive installation exhibited as part of the Dubai Design Week in which she developed a web-app that allowed visitors to co-design the future of their city in real-time. Her research was also presented as part of the latest SMUS conference -Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability Conference- in 2021 and as guest lecturer at MIT’s school of architecture and planning. 

Sebastian Estivill & Karla Alfaro – Voluntary Intelligence Center (CIV)
28 February, 17:00.

The Voluntary Intelligence Center (CIV) is a non-profit Civil Association established in Mexico City after a major earthquake on September 19, 2017. The primary mission of the association is to develop technologies and strategies to help the civilian population during future disasters. In collaboration with the academical sector, the CIV has developed 3 major projects: VATRE, SIRAC, and Silvana:

1) VATRE focuses on building the chassis and electromechanical components of UAV's to be deployed during the response phase.
2) SIRAC uses image recognition algorithms along with robot vision and navigation to perform as "the brain" of the CIV's UAV assets.
3) Silvana concerns the creation of virtual 3D scenarios simulators to train human UAV pilots and strategists, as well as generate images for the convolutional neural networks trainings. 

Sebastian is the founder of the CIV is a Mechanical Electrical Engineer. During the 2017 earthquake, he coordinated the voluntary response efforts in collaboration with the Mexican Army and other federal institutions. Karla Alfaro is an Economist, Data, and Political Scientist who specializes in econometrics and data analysis. Her work on computer vision provided the CIV, in 2020, with its first trained convolutional neural network to detect collapsed buildings using aerial images.

Matt Forest - Head of Solutions Engineering at Carto
Miguel Álvarez García - Director of Data Science at Carto
15 March, 16:00.

Matt and Miguel work with a range of customers to study geospatial problems and develop spatial data science analyses to integrate into Carto’s core platform. They use a wide range of tools to solve problems and use creative approaches, both in terms of technology and spatial data science techniques, to solve complex geospatial problems. Carto is a Software as a Service cloud computing platform that provides GIS, web mapping, and spatial data science tools. The company is positioned as a Location Intelligence platform due to tools with an aptitude for data analysis and visualization that do not require previous GIS or development experience.

Andrew Zolli - Chief Impact Office at Planet
30 March, 17:00. 

Andrew Zolli oversees Sustainable Development and Global Impact initiatives of Planet, a breakthrough geospatial imaging organization that has deployed the largest constellation of Earth-observing satellites in history. Together, Planet’s satellites images the entire surface of the Earth every day, in high resolution. The resulting data has transformational value for addressing a host of global challenges, including measuring and monitoring natural capital, ensuring human rights, predicting food insecurity, assessing climate change, accelerating disaster response, and improving conservation, among others. Andrew is also a well-known writer and thinker on the use of technology for social and ecological impact, and the author of bestselling Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, now published in many languages worldwide.

Jonathan America - TomTom
11 May, 15:30.

TomTom is a leading independent geolocation technology specialist, shaping mobility with highly accurate maps, navigation and real-time traffic information. Jonathan is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at TomTom. He has been working with location technology data and mobility products for more than 10 years, bringing always a "customer-first", "user-centric" approach throughout all product life cycle. 

This event will take place in person in MAR.2.06.

Google Talk: Tech Ethics and Poilcy

The Department of Methodology held a talk with Google Policy Advisors on Monday 25 April 2022.

This was a relaxed setting in which attendees heard from two individuals in a sector that may be of interest. The discussion focused on ethics and policy as well. Students were able to learn about life in tech policy and what it is like to work at Google.

Allison Mishkin is the Kids and Families Product Policy Lead at Google and former Thouron Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Kate Sim is a Senior Child Safety Specialist in Google’s Product Policy team and also holds a PhD from the Oxford Internet Institute. Her interest areas include AI in public life, ethnographic methods and help-seeking behaviour.

The event took place in person and online.

Process Automation Bootcamp
Data-Driven Management in a hyperautomated world.

This Process Automation Bootcamp gave students and young professionals insights into how data science and automation can be used for operations and internal analytics. Participants gained skills in the Celonis Integromat software and learnt how to use it in the management and consulting context. A particular focus was placed on the automation of process flows and the potential which can be unlocked. 

What students learnt:

• The theory and application of process automation
• How to use the Celonis Integromat software at business user level
• How Applied Software Tools are used in the Automation Sphere (Action Flows & Integromat)
• How Process Automation can be applied to a business case 

Digital and Green Recovery in all regions? Opportunities and challenges for economic and territorial cohesion 

Tuesday 29 March 2022.

The 8th Cohesion Report presented a first picture of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic at the regional level in Europe. The report highlights that the green and digital transitions will be key drivers of EU growth, but argues that, without appropriate policy action, new economic, social and territorial disparities may appear. Discussants explored how we can move towards these green and digital transitions, and what opportunities and challenges they present. 

LSE Staff and Students could attend in person.

Speakers: Dr Lewis Dijkstra (European Commission), Prof Iain Begg (LSE), Danae Kyriakopoulou (Grantham Research Institute), Prof Francesca Medda (UCL) 

Chair: Prof Riccardo Crescenzi (LSE) 

LSE Careers Consultancy Project in conjunction with Racing Unleashed

LSE Careers run a range of interesting consulting projects, including a Consultancy Project in conjunction with Racing Unleashed.

Programme overview:

Students were given the opportunity to work on a 6-week real-world experience with clients, acting as 'student consultants'. They receive their client’s brief, undertake project research, and submit deliverables to the industry client and PhD mentor for feedback. Students were divided into teams of five, to ensure an interdisciplinary approach to problem-solving.

A detailed summary presentation of the programme which provides more information can be found here.

Programme requirements:

• Student teams collaborated completely online to complete the project. Offline collaboration of student teams is subject to individual discretion.
• Students were required to commit to 25 hours in total over the 6-week experience, and submit a final presentation and data dashboard to the client. 

The application deadline has now passed. 

If you have any questions, please contact careers.internships@lse.ac.uk.

How is data used in sport and what can AI do? How do teams, media and betting firms use data to reconstruct performance?

AI in Sport: An Overview
Patrick Lucey PhD (Chief Scientist, Stats Perform)

24 March 2022, 17:30 - 18:30.

Miss this event? Watch a recording here.

To make the best decisions, tell the best stories or make the best predictions in sport, teams, media and betting firms are looking to use more granular data to better reconstruct player and team performance.

For the most part, these granular data sources have taken the shape of tracking data which capture the location of every player/ball at a high frame-rate. However, to both capture and utilise tracking data we need to: a) use computer vision to capture tracking data from video (both in-venue and from broadcast), and b) use machine-learning techniques to transform the tracking data into an “useable” form.

Over the past decade, Stats Perform has been at the heart of this revolution of both creating granular data but also utilising it across different applications.

In this talk, Patrick Lucey, PhD (Chief Scientist, Stats Perform) covered these aspects by discussing:

• The brief history of sports data and what AI can do (and cannot do)
• Creating tracking data and deriving semantics and quality metrics from it
• Utilising tracking data via interactive interfaces to answer questions on strategy, search and simulation
• Prediction applications - i.e. player recruitment and match/season forecasting

Patrick used examples from Stats Perform's work over the last decade in soccer, basketball and tennis. At the conclusion of the talk, Patrick highlights some of the “Grand AI Challenges” that Stats Perform is focusing on.

Speaker’s Biography:

Since October 2015, Patrick Lucey has been at Stats Perform and currently serves as Chief Scientist. His goal is to maximise the value of the 40+ years worth of sports data that Stats Perform has. Previously, Patrick was at Disney Research for 5 years, where he conducted research into automatic sports broadcasting using large amounts of spatiotemporal tracking data. Previous to that, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University/Department of Psychology at University of Pittsburgh conducting research on automatic facial expression recognition. Patrick received his BEng(EE) from USQ and PhD from QUT, Australia in 2003 and 2008 respectively. He has had papers in the final of the research track at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 8 of the last 9 years – winning in 2016, and runner-up in 2017 and 2018. Additionally, he has won best paper awards at INTERSPEECH (2007) and WACV (2014) international conferences. His main research interests are in artificial intelligence and interactive machine learning in sporting domains.

Find more information about Patrick here.

Miss this event? Watch a recording here.

Hosted by the Department of Media and Communications and International Inequalities Institute, this event hosted leading experts to discuss Ellen Helsper's latest book, The Digital Disconnect which explores the relationship between digital and social inequalities, and the lived consequences of digitisation.

With the increased digitisation of society comes an increased concern about who is left behind. This event took place on Monday 7 March.

This event formed part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series imagining what the world could look like after the crisis, and how we get there.

Data Science Weekend 2022

The LSESU Data Science Society will hosted its annual datathon on the weekend of 26 - 27 February 2022. This event provided the opportunity to attend workshops, meet industry partners and solve challenges posed by Huawei, FNA, and TrueCue.

This event was co-hosted and sponsored by the LSE Data Science Institute.

Prizes for the top participants included opportunities to be fast-tracked for summer internships with our sponsors, and cash prizes worth £2500 to be won.

This event was held both in-person (for LSE students only) and virtually, so participants could join from wherever they are in the world. 

More information is available here.

Data and Tech programme 2022

LSE Careers hosted a range of events in Lent Term to aid students with an interest in pursuing careers in data science and related fields.

Panel events

Careers in tech for social impact
14 February 2022
Chaired by the LSE Digital Skills Lab
Panellists from Sparta Global, Ebury, Softwire, Computer Aid International.

Careers in Data Science
17 February 2022
Chaired by the LSE Data Science Institute
Panellists from Mastercard, Smart Odds, Google, Home Depot Data Science.

Employer skills seminars

FDM - stepping into a career in tech
16 February 2022

Roche - how technology is shaping the healthcare sector
16 February 2022

Meet our alumni

Meet our alum: tech and data
15 February 2022
With alumni from Twitter and Capital One

Skills seminar: Introduction to SQL coding workshop

This session explored SQL, which is fast becoming a fundamental skill when working in Data Science. As such a good working knowledge of the language is often considered essential when applying to many roles.

In this session, attendees got a taste of programming in SQL - essentially Excel for Big Data - from Ties Boukema, a Google analyst.

Ties works as a financial analyst, and also contributes to Google's climate science team. He's also the EMEA Data Science facilitator, and co-founder of Cognitas Bootcamps.

This event explored the following:

• understand the basics of SQL and begin your learning plan
• test out your newly acquired skills on some basic data tasks
• gain an insight into the various applications that SQL has
• learn more about career opportunities in Data Science
• learn from an Senior Financial Analyst at one for the world’s leading big tech firms.

This event was particularly useful if you:

• are curious about coding or would like to understand the basics of SQL
• are considering a career path outside of consulting & banking
• are interested in finding out about the wide variety of applications SQL has.

This event is part of the Careers in Data and Tech programme which features a diverse range of seminars, networking sessions and panels aimed at students who aspire to work in a data and tech role.

In the first of the Law, Technology and Society Seminars, Professor Roger Brownsword of King's College London discussed his work on AI Governance.

The LSE Law, Technology and Society group conducts world-leading research into the regulation of technology and its normative implications, including the legal, regulatory, policy and social implications of emerging technologies such as AI and ICT, biomedical and biotechnologies, distributed systems (including blockchain), FinTech, RegTech and LawTech.

Miss this event? A podcast is available here.

Automation Era - How will technology reshape business and how does it change how people work today?

A conversation with Professor Leslie Willcocks & Angela-Sophia Gebert (Celonis)

27 January 2022, 15:00 - 16:30 (GMT)

Across industries and sectors, machines are increasingly augmenting and replacing human labour. Will machine learning technologies result in mass job losses, a dramatic skill shift in the labour market, or enable people to engage in more fulfilling and creative work?

In this event Professor Leslie Willcocks (LSE) and Angela Sophia Gebert (Celonis) will explore questions such as how hyper automation has taken place, how automation is used in the business world and how it can inject new life into global economies

The event will be split into three sections. In the first section Leslie will review the evidence and report on his research before Angela uses the Celonis Integromat Software, an advanced online automation platform, to provide a hands-on use case and practical application. Following this attendees will be welcome to participate in a discussion session.

LSE students that have an interest in AI and data science will be interested in attending this event, particularly those considering a career in the field. Our speakers will share how future career trajectories will be transformed by AI-driven augmentation and automation, as well as sharing insights on the skills that are important for students to develop in order to work with and benefit from data science and machine learning tools.

Miss this event? A recording is available here.

CIVICA Research: Collaborative Hackathon on Data-Driven Technologies for Social Sciences.

This CIVICA Network hackathon took place on Thursday 16 December 2021, 14:00 - 17:00 CET.

How do you think political and social features of countries relate to cumulative COVID-19 deaths? Why does the impact of COVID-19 vary so much, both across and within countries?

This event was the first of our research collaboration events planned in the coming months, where participants will share their expertise and skills to solve a specific but pressing issue of our time: the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across and within different countries. Organised and hosted by the LSE Data Science Institute as part of the CIVICA Research consortium, the event focused on the CIVICA-partner EUI team’s collaborative statistical modelling project, the COVID-19 Model Challenges.

The list of participants at this hackathon included Ken Benoit (London School of Economics), Miriam Golden (European University Institute), Alex Scacco (WZB - Berlin Social Science Center) and Rens Chazottes (European University Institute). Dr Miqdad Asaria (London School of Economics) was invited to address participants on some of the challenges of COVID modelling, with a particular focus on social aspects.

Professor Ken Benoit reflects on the event here.

Recordings of the speakers can be found here.

In line with the LSESU Data Science Society objective to provide students with more opportunities to work on data science, interested students are recruited at the beginning of each term to partake in projects. The 2021/22 Michaelmas Term programme of projects was created in academic year 2020/2021 as part of the society's rebranding from the LSESU Machine Learning Society to the LSESU Data Science Society.

The opportunity was open to students regardless of their course or technical background, with successful applicants grouped to work on pre-defined data science problems. In Michaelmas Term twenty six participants worked on six different projects, with each group under the direction of a project lead. 

The groups worked on projects in areas ranging from trade agreements, to fake news detection, to securities pricing. A full list of the project briefs can be found here. Examples of past projects done by society members can be found here.

The aim of this structured environment is for each group to partake in a flagship event at which projects are presented to an expert judging panel. The judging panel featured experts such as DSI Director Professor Ken Benoit and as teams were already grouped based on skill levels, judging was holistic. The top three teams won prizes worth £300, £200 or £100 pounds respectively.

This event was recorded and those interested in watching the presentations can express their interest via email.

The Global Disruptors Society was honoured to host Scott McNealy, founder of Curriki and former Chairman/CEO of Sun Microsystems for a virtual fireside chat.

At age 27, Scott McNealy co-founded Sun Microsystems alongside fellow Stanford graduates Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim. Under Scott's leadership as CEO, Sun Microsystems grew from a campus startup to one of the most influential tech companies of its time, reaching a peak valuation of $200 Billion prior to the dotcom bubble. During this period, Sun Microsystems created Java and contributed to the evolution of many other technologies, including Unix and virtualized computing.

Since departing Sun Microsystems having been CEO for the past 22 years, Scott went on to found social media intelligence company Wayin (since acquired by Cheetah Digital) and Curriki, a platform that democratizes education and provides open e-learning solutions to millions of users.

Building Data Science Collaborations between the UK and Brazil

This workshop was hosted by the LSE Data Science Institute in collaboration with the University of Exeter College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences.

The aim of the workshop was to connect researchers based in the UK and Brazil who had not collaborated before. Any researchers based in academic institutions in the UK or Brazil with an interest in establishing data science research collaborations were welcome and over 50 researchers were successful in securing a place. These researchers shared innovative ideas for potential projects.

Researchers were grouped according to their topics of interest and facilitators conducted structured brainstorming sessions aimed at proposing small research projects. Topics of discussion were loosely based on DSI research themes.

Find out more about the workshop here. Follow up queries should be sent to Dr Jonathan Cardoso-Silva and Dr Chico Camargo.

The event facilitators would like to thank all those that attended for making this event such an enjoyable experience.

The LSESU Data Science Society organised this panel event to highlight the careers in data science that are available within regulation and the public sector. Guest speakers explored the applications of data science in these sectors and shared their professional experiences.

Speakers:

Chris Spaull - Data Scientist in the UK Ministry of Justice

L’ubos Pernis - Head of Suptech Development at FNA

Yennie Jun - AI and Data Science Fellow at UN Global Pulse

David Floyd - Data Science Lead at Permira and Ex-Data Scientist in UK Home Office

The LSESU Data Science Society organise events, projects and a community platform to introduce members to the applications of data science in different fields and industries, and have built a community for LSE students to learn, accelerate and support each other on their data science journeys.

This panel event was designed to provide students with insights on the exciting roles available within a data-related consulting career and the pathways into this. The panel shared their career journeys and answered questions from attendees.

Speakers:

Leonor Furtado - AI consultant @ Accenture

Hasdeep Sethi - Data Science Consultant @ Strat7

Darius Ansari - Principal Data Consultant @ Newton Europe

This event was organised by the LSESU Data Science Society. For more information and if you have queries, please contact them via email.

The LSESU Data Science Society organise events, projects and a community platform to introduce members to the applications of data science in different fields and industries, and have built a community for LSE students to learn, accelerate and support each other on their data science journeys.

Curious about the future of finance and banking? 

This panel event was designed to provide students with information from a range of experienced speakers about how data skills can be applied to the financial world. The panel shared their career journeys, some insights about their role and their views on latest industry trends. 

Speakers:

Glen Moutrie
Data Scientist at the London Stock Exchange group.

Glen specialises in the applications of machine learning in finance and economics. Programming languages: Python, R and Java.

Jeremy Turiel
AI Researcher at JP Morgan and PhD candidate in Financial Computing at UCL.

Jeremy has experience in financial services, focusing on risk modelling with Network Analysis and Statistical Physicals Methods.

Ujwal Shreyas
Quantitative Researcher at BlackRock.

Ujwal builds systematic alpha strategies for hedge funds and long-only potfolios by leveraging machine learning alternative data and applying economic and financial theory. 

This event was organised by the LSESU Data Science Society. For more information and if you have queries, please contact them via email.

The LSESU Data Science Society organise events, projects and a community platform to introduce members to the applications of data science in different fields and industries, and have built a community for LSE students to learn, accelerate and support each other on their data science journeys.

A recording of this event is available for LSE students here.

This information session represented a chance to find out how to get involved with data science as a student at LSE.

Information on courses, workshops and digital training was provided by speakers from a range of Departments and there was a chance for questions to be asked "on everything from prerequisites to Python".

LSE's exciting data science courses were outlined in presentations from the Department of Methodology, Department of Mathematics and Department of Statistics that explained course content, reading lists and prerequisites. Further opportunities to access training in data science from the Digital Skills Lab were explained as well as information regarding brand new modules from the Data Science Institute.

The DSI was very pleased to contribute to the LSE Festival 2021 through Dr Erica Thompson taking part in the 'Festival Shorts' series.

Given their power to influence the world, Erica discusses how we can ensure that mathematical models are developed in a transparent and accountable way, providing information that is useful and relevant without being over-confident or subject to hidden bias.

A recording of Erica's Festival Short is now available.

This was the inaugural flagship event of the LSESU Data Science Society. As the cornerstone of data science activity at LSE, the DSI part-sponsored this event.

The event took the form of both conference and hackathon to showcase interesting career areas in data science, finance and consulting.

The LSESU Data Science Society organise events, projects and a community platform to introduce members to the applications of data science in different fields and industries, and have built a community for LSE students to learn, accelerate and support each other on their data science journeys.

The DSI was honoured to host this fireside chat with Jacky Wright (Chief Digital Officer and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft US) as our first online public event.

Jacky Wright is widely recognised as a transformational global leader, innovative technologist and recognized STEM advocate. Jacky leads teams to help businesses leverage technology to drive innovation, adopt sustainable and accessible business models, and digitally transform.

The event was chaired by Professor Ken Benoit, Director of the LSE Data Science Institute. The podcast recording of this event is now available.