Updates
BAY-SICSS is going virtual! We are adapting our partner site from UC Berkeley campus to an online format, but will continue our thematic focus on computational social science in partnership with Bay Area nonprofits. We are working with SICSS-Duke, our partners, and guest speakers to balance flexibility with our goal of creating a community of community engaged scholars.
The instructional program will involve lectures, group problem sets, and participant-led research projects, held concurrently with SICSS-Duke. In the second part of the institute, participants will co-develop a project with Bay Area nonprofits in health, criminal justice, and civil society. Where we originally envisioned this project as a one-week, full time experience, we will be shifting this project to a two-week, part-time project to give our participants and partners more flexibility.
Thanks to everyone who applied to participate in BAY-SICSS. We are currently reviewing applications and expect to contact participants in mid-late May.
Overview
From the evening of June 15 to July 3 2020, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley will co-host a partner event for the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science. The San Francisco Bay Area Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (BAY-SICSS) will offer its first incarnation–and will be fully virtual!
BAY-SICSS has been generously supported by both Stanford University (Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, Human-Centered AI Initiative, and Arts and Sciences) and UC Berkeley (Berkeley Institute for Data Science and D-Lab), and Hopelab. BAY-SICSS is co-organized by Nick Camp, Jaren Haber, and Jae Yeon Kim, with Sharad Goel and David J. Harding. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty interested in computational social science in the public interest: both social scientists (broadly conceived) and data scientists (broadly conceived). BAY-SICSS is unique among partner locations in its focus on local community partnership, as reflected in our programming, participants, and partners.
Our instructional program involves lectures, group problem sets, and participant-led research projects, along with outside speakers conducting computational social science research in a variety of settings, such as academia, industry, and government. During the second week, participants will co-develop a project with Bay Area nonprofits in health, criminal justice, and civil society. There will be ample opportunities for students to discuss their ideas and research with the organizers, other participants, and visiting speakers. Because we are committed to open and reproducible research, all materials created by faculty and students for the Summer Institute will be released open source.
Participation is restricted to Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, and untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D. Most participant costs during the workshop, including housing and most meals, will be covered, and most travel expenses will be reimbursed up to a set cap. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in computational social science. About thirty participants will be invited, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire two-week program held at UC Berkeley.
Application materials were due Friday, May 1, 2020.