News & Events

Last week, February 11th, we celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Our partners at IMUS, Universidad de Sevilla, even opened their doors for the local News team from CSN2 Sevilla for some exclusive interviews with our female Maths-enthusiasts.

Amongst them, our NeEDS Secondee Cristina Molero del Río who talked about a real life problem that she has worked on together with other colleagues at IMUS during the 2019 NeEDS Modelling Week. The problem she addressed regarded the fountains of the city of Seville and the prevention of contamination of their water. In order to do so, a mathematical model was developed to predict the chlorine level of a fountain, that is the basis to regulate its pH level and thus control the contamination of the water. Watch the full News Section here (in Spanish, start minute 04:45).

As the UN points out, only 30 per cent of researchers worldwide are women. These are numbers that need to change and we are proud to be contributing to equal opportunities for women and girls in science. The NeEDS consortium has a very balanced gender ratio and continuously works to foster and sustain gender balance and equal opportunities. In 2019, 9 of our 19 secondees were female, and we look forward to facilitate even more secondments for female scientists over the next years.

For more insights into the contributions of our female participants, check out our slides on STEM NeEDS Women.

2020 starts with exciting news:

Together with her colleague Antonio Alonso Ayuso from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid, our NeEDS Project Coordinator, Dolores Romero Morales, has been appointed new Editor-in-Chief of TOP, the Operations Research Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research.

With theory and methodology of Operations Research, and the practice of Data Driven Decision Making through innovative applications as its focus, TOP is a highly relevant journal for all NeEDS members and enthusiasts and we congratulate Dolores to her appointment!

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19 

UPDATES ON NEW DATES WILL FOLLOW

EURO PHD SCHOOL ON DATA DRIVEN DECISION MAKING AND OPTIMIZATION

10-19 July 2020, at the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Seville

Register here.

The EURO PhD School (EPS) will focus on giving participants advanced training on Data Driven Decision Making.

The EURO PhD School (EPS) will be focused on giving participants advanced training on the use of Data Science to aid Data Driven Decision Making. There will be two main components in this EPS. First, methodological training on the role of Mathematical Optimization in Data Science will be given in the format of lectures and computer workshops. The lectures will highlight the mathematical modelling and numerical optimization behind data analysis and data visualization tools. The computer workshops will put this knowledge in action. Second, applications of the acquired knowledge to the modeling of specific industrial problems will be presented by professionals from industry and worked out by the PhD students. Mathematical models and numerical solution approaches will be developed and communicated, following a collaborative approach, in which the PhD students will work in small groups under the guidance of the instructors.

 

Chairs of the Scientific Committee

Prof. Emilio Carrizosa

IMUS-Institute of Mathematics of the University of Seville, Spain

&

Prof. Dolores Romero Morales

Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

On November 1st, NeEDS member Statistics Netherlands is organising a 1-day workshop to share knowledge and gathered expertise, methodological challenges in the area of Privacy Preserved Data Sharing, and to jointly look at the most implementable solutions.

A total of 5 cases will be presented on topics such as synthetic data generation, machine learning via SMPC and pseudonomisation.

Jeanette Walldorf, PhD Student at the department of Economics (CBS), has received this year’s Fonnesbech PhD award for extraordinary research which is estimated to be on an international top level. The PhD award totals 140.000 DKK and it is awarded to a PhD scholar at CBS to finance one year’s salary.

Jeanette is currently enjoying a 4-month long secondment at Duke University as part of the NeEDS project where she is working within Work Package 2 on cutting-edge modelling to improve performance and develope novel measures of interpretability.

In the name of the NeEDS Team, congratulations to Jeanette!

On Tuesday 17 December 2019, Statistics Flanders and NeEDS member Statistics Netherlands jointly organise this one-day international conference on how data science can contribute to better official statistics for decision making.

As stated on Statistic Flanders’ webpage, the conference will adress questions such as how can new data sources and techniques help in supporting better decisions in a fast-moving digital environment? What are the opportunities from the boom in the availability of data to inform policy decisions, and what are the risks in using new tools and techniques to handle big data sources?

The conference will take place in Brussels, on the Tour & Taxis site (Havenlaan 86C, 1000 Brussel) and will be held in English. For free registration and a closer look at the program, please follow the link.

 

Together with three visiting ESR’s from Universidad de Sevilla – María Remedios Sillero Denamiel, Cristina Molero-Río and Sandra Benítez-Peña – the NeEDS Project Coordinator, Dolores Romero Morales, presented the latest advances in machine learning to deal with complex data. With 28 guests from industry and academia, the workshop was a great success that allowed lively discussions and insights into the researchers’ works and progresses within the NeEDs project.

From July 7^th – 13^th, the ECMI Postgraduate / VI Iberian / NeEDS Modelling Week was held at IMUS, the Mathematics Institute of the University of Seville. Here, students and young researchers are being trained on the latest advances of mathematical and statistical modeling problems proposed by industry.

On Monday, 7 companies from various sectors have presented their technological challenges to 80 participants from 13 different countries, including 8 PhD students from the NeEDS project. The problems address various challenges on big data, drones, road design, efficient energy generation, agriculture, industrial production, medical imaging, and more. With the support of expert instructors in the respective fields, the student groups are now tackling the mathematical challenges over the course of this week, which will end on Saturday with the presentations of the students’ solutions.

The ECMI Postgraduate / VI Iberian / NeEDS Modelling Week is a satellite event of the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and co-organized by the European Mathematical-Industry Consortium, the Spanish Mathematics-Industry Network, the Portuguese Network of Mathematics for Innovation and Industry, as well as the NeEDS Project.

With even the regional television RTVE reporting about us, this event has already been a great success with inspiring learning opportunities and we look forward to tomorrow’s big presentations by our students.

 

On July 8th, the Steering Board Meeting was held at the University of Sevilla (USE), Spain.

12 members of the NeEDS Steering Board have come together in Sevilla as well as online to discuss the progress of the NeEDS project after its first 6 months since kick-off.

The opportunity of face-to-face group discussions has allowed the network to build stronger connections, exchange experiences and work out important steps to ensure successful communication of each partner’s expectations and interests. For the future progress of NeEDS, this meeting was an important and fruitful step and we want to thank everyone who contributed to it.

The NeEDS kick-off meeting was held at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark on January 28th, 2019. Participants were welcomed by Dean of Research Søren Hvidkjær, who congratulated the team on receiving the grant and acknowledged the great possibilities of collaboration between academia and industry created by the funding from the EU MSCA program.

The main purpose of the meeting was to allow participants to get to know each other and to introduce the setup of the project implementation plan. The project management team at CBS laid out the obligations of partners and the guidelines for secondments, as well as the tasks, deliverables and events of the project and the reporting and monitoring requirements from the project officer.

Participants also discussed the research work packages and how to best ensure knowledge exchange between the academic partners and industry partners, through secondments as well as overall collaboration.

Throughout the day, colleagues from CBS also participated in the meeting to learn about the project and the possibilities of going on secondments. A number of industry partners joined the meeting via Skype to introduce themselves. The meeting was very fruitful and it was a pleasure to see everyone together for the first time. We look forward to many more exciting discussions on data science through secondments, workshops and other project events.