June 16 to June 27, 2025 | Rotterdam, the Netherlands
ODISSEI-SICSS is split into two phases. During the first week, the participants will be introduced to ODISSEI and taught machine learning in Python. This will be primarily done through a course run by the eScience center. In the second week of the summer school, participants will be able to make full use of the ODISSEI infrastructure, during which they will be put into teams and challenged to work on research projects. Each team will be provided with access to FIRMBACKBONE, containing detailed data on Dutch companies, through the secure environment SANE. Specifically, researchers will get access to the corporate trade register, employment surveys, financial data, emission data, and indicators derived from websites.
FIRMBACKBONE is a treasure trove of data which can help us predict important outcomes. The teams will compete to develop effective predictive models to answer innovative research questions. This challenge will help participants get a more hands-on experience of computational social science research with some of the most advanced data infrastructure available.
At the end of most days of the summer school, there will be a guest speaker who will present their work or a general topic in computational social science to the participants. These talks will last 20-30 mins with 15-20 mins of Q&A. Slides will be added on the ODISSEI Zenodo Community; other material will be shared via GitHub.
All course sessions will take place in the Sanders Building on the Erasmus Campus Woudestein, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam. You can find information here and download the campus map here. Throughout the summer school, ODISSEI will organize various social events. Read more about those in the timetable below. Each day will have three breaks. A coffee break in the morning, lunch at 12:00, and another coffee break in the afternoon.
10:00-12:00: Introducing ODISSEI and Computational Social Science. Speaker: Tom Emery
13:00-15:00: Introduction to FIRMBACKBONE
15:00-16:30: Introduction to SANE. Speaker: Lucas van der Meer, CTO ODISSEI.
Social Event (17:00-19:00): Opening Drinks @ Erasmus Paviljoen, Rotterdam
Programme starts at 10:00, rather than 9:00
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
09:00-17:00: more detailed schedule of the day will be available shortly
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
16:00-17:00: Guest lecture by Eve Ernst, VU Amsterdam.
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
09:00: Welcome and icebreaker
09:15: Introduction to machine learning
10:00: Break
10:10: Tabular data exploration
11:00: Break
11:10: Fitting a scikit-learn model on numerical data
13:00: Fitting a scikit-learn model on numerical data
14:00: Break
14:10: Fitting a scikit-learn model on numerical data
15:00: Break
15:10: Cross-validation
15:45: Wrap-up
16:00-17:00: Guest lecture: Ethics in Computational Research by Chirag Arora, TU Delft.
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
09:00: Welcome and recap
09:15: Handling categorical data
10:00: Break
10:10 Using numerical and categorical variables together
11:00: Break
11:10: Intuitions on decision trees
11:30: Overfitting and underfitting
13:00: Validation and learning curves
13:30: Advanced topics
14:00: Break
14:10: Try out learned skills on new dataset
15:00-16:00: Guest lecture: Corporate networks by prof. Eelke Heemskerk, University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.
16:10: Concluding remarks
16:45: Wrap-up & Post-workshop Survey
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Social Event (17:30-20:00): Drinks at De Gele Kanarie in Rotterdam
09:00-17:00: more detailed schedule of the day will be available shortly
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
10:00-11:00: Introducing the Data Challenge
11:00-12:00: Getting into SANE
13:00-17:00: Research project
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
09:00 - 17:00 Research project
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
09:00 - 17:00 Research project
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
09:00 - 17:00 Research project
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
Closing dinner @Stockholm Bar, Rotterdam
09:00 - 12:00 Research project
12:30 - 17:00 Presentations
12:00-13:00: Lunch break
Location: Room:0.12, Sanders building
You can host a partner location of the Summer Institutes of Computational Social Science (SICSS) at your university, company, NGO, or government agency.