ATTENTION: SICSS-Howard-Mathematica has been postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19.
From the evening of Friday, June 12th to the morning of Saturday, June 27th, Howard University and Mathematica will sponsor a Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS). The theme of the SICSS-Howard/Mathematica is Lifting New Voices to Address Ethics and Equity in AI. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and beginning faculty interested in computational social science. The Summer Institute is for both social scientists (broadly conceived) and data scientists (broadly conceived).
The interactive and instructional program will involve lectures, group problem sets, participant-led research projects, and career development enrichment activities. There will also be outside speakers who conduct and use computational social science research in a variety of settings, such as academia, industry, and government. Topics covered include text as data, website scraping, digital field experiments, non-probability sampling, mass collaboration, and ethics. 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 open to Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, and untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D. Most participant costs during the session, 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 accepted, and participants are expected to fully attend and participate in the entire two-week program.
The SICSS-Howard/Mathematica in Washington, D.C. is groundbreaking for a number of reasons. It will be the first Summer Institute held at a historically black college and university (HBCU). It also has the benefit of a deeply invested partner, Mathematica. Finally, SICSS-Howard/Mathematica will also have the benefit of a topical focus: Ethics and Equity in AI.
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