All posts by Markus Herklotz

Apply now by February 15th for the “Data Science for Social Good” summer fellowship in Munich in 2023!

Hosted by the Chair of Frauke Kreuter and the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), this 2-month full-time program joins forces of aspiring talents in the area of Data Science in small groups to work on projects with a positive societal impact.

The program is designed for two teams of 4-5 fellows, each working on a separate project for the social good. Both teams will be assisted by a Technical Mentor and a Project Manager. The participants receive a fellowship that covers living expenses for the time of the program from August 1st – September 30th.

The program is aimed at students, recent graduates or PhD students from diverse scientific, as well as geographical backgrounds. We therefore encourage applications from the fields of data science, computer science, statistics, but also in general the social and natural sciences.

If you are interested in joining the program or have students, friends or colleagues in mind that could be interested, check out the website and apply by February 15th: https://sites.google.com/view/dssgx-munich-2023/startseite

Please also share this call in your network, in classes you teach or approach people directly.

In case of any concerns please feel free to reach out via dssg2023@stat.uni-muenchen.de

Quo Vadis, Digital Privacy? Perceptions, Practices, and Policies
January 26, 2023, 5 – 6.45 pm CET, onlineA

Just in time for privacy day, BERD@NFDI and the Transatlantic Privacy Perceptions Panel (TAPP) invite you to join the online discussion on perceptions, practices, and policies of digital privacy.

Jessica Vitak (University of Maryland), Leah von der Heyde (LMU Munich), and Zothan Mawii (University of Maryland) will present first results from TAPP’s qualitative and quantitative research on the Diversity of Transatlantic Stakeholders’ Privacy Perceptions.

Vasilka Stoilova (University of Mannheim) and Markus Herklotz (LMU Munich) from BERD@NFDI will show how the interactive Virtual Assistant (iVA) contributes to privacy literacy in practice.

A panel discussion featuring Alena Buyx (TU Munich), Kobbi Nissim (Georgetown University), and Philipp Räther (Allianz) will explore the question how data sharing and protection can be balanced in the development and use of AI, moderated by Frauke Kreuter (LMU Munich & University of Maryland).

With the amount of digital data generated, it becomes more and more compelling for researchers to learn how to make sense of these new data sources. To introduce researchers to the necessary methodological toolkit, GESIS offers an online course on Data Science Techniques for Survey Researchers from August 8 to August 12 in collaboration with BERD@NFDI.

This course aims at participants interested in learning some fundamental techniques in data science, collecting and working with digital data, and understanding machine learning.

Besides the necessary theoretical knowledge, the course will specifically focus on practical hands-on exercises with R. The instructors Prof. Dr. Christoph Kern and Dr. Malte Schierholtz will be available to assist the participants during the practical questions.

We are happy to announce, that participants are eligible to apply for one of six available scholarships funded by BERD@NFDI to waive the 500€ students fee.

More information on how to apply and further course details: GESIS: Data Science Techniques for Survey Researchers.

Company websites are an important source of economic data and can be used for various scientific approaches, such as predicting firm innovativeness or examining market entry strategies. But the content of those websites changes over time, which requires a continuous monitoring to capture this (change of) information.

For this reason, the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research scrapes the content of corporate websites since 2018 in a panel format, updated every three to six months.

Find out more about the data and how you can access it on our new Mannheim Web Panel page!

Working with data involves attention to data privacy issues in order to protect the individual. But for researchers it can be very demanding to identify which privacy protection regulation is binding and under which conditions it applies to their own work as legal issues are usually not central to their area of expertise.

To offer researchers and other people working with data an entry point to understand those important privacy law issues, the BERD@BW team developed an interactive Virtual Assistant (iVA). iVA leads you with a series of questions through the regulations and provides a result based on your answers.

The first part of iVA, which examines with you if privacy protection regulations apply to your data project, was recently updated and can be accessed here: https://www.berd-bw.de/iva/ (german)

While iVA currently addresses if privacy protection regulations apply to you, we are already working on an extension to cover the issue more profoundly. We are looking forward to present you a second part of iVA, that will let you check if you are allowed to process personal data and what requirements you have to keep in mind.

Our Online-Micro-Series Data Literacy Snacks started on May 12 with a thrilling presentation by Juli Tkotz. With 65 participants in the session, we experienced a lively discussion on reproducible data analysis and a great demand for the exchange of ideas, concepts and practical workflows. For anyone who missed the session or wants to revisit it, we provide the slides on our website.

We are delighted to engage into three more sessions, the next one taking place on May 26, 1pm CEST about Research Data Management by Irene Schumm and Lorena Steeb. We’re looking forward to see you there!

For registration, please send us an e-mail to info@berd-bw.de and let us know, if you would like to attend the whole series or (which) single events. We will confirm your registration and provide you with the Zoom information shortly before each event.

All data will be treated in compliance with the University of Mannheim Data Protection Declaration. By sending us your registration information, you agree to the processing of the data for the reason of registration according to Art. 6 I a) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

We are delighted to announce our free Online-Micro-Series. In our Data Literacy Snacks, we want to provide engaging data literacy contents and skills in a digestive 60 minutes format.

We invite you to join us every second Wednesday 1pm CEST on Zoom starting on May 12.

Please find more information and registration here.