Friday, May 06, 2011

5th Annual French Complex Systems Summer School

This might be of interest to some.


5th Annual French Complex Systems Summer School

"Complex Systems and Complex Networks"

Paris, July 4th to 16th, 2011


Website: http://iscpif.fr/CSSS2011

The school will provide in-depth reference courses to a multi-disciplinary audience of researchers and students. The level of lectures will range from introductory to advanced, as attendees are not expected to be familiar with all the fields covered. Lecture topics will address specific complex systems methods and tools and their relevance to various disciplines (physics, biology, computer science, geography, sociology, linguistic, etc.). An emphasis will be given to complex networks both as objects of study and as a framework for modeling social and natural phenomena.

Group projects
During the school participants will have to conduct a group project to which about 50% of their time will be dedicated. Small size groups will be constituted on the basis of personal motivations. Groups will have to present their project collectively at the end of school. According to group preferences, projects will be oriented towards some particular aspects of complex networks and particular objects: dynamics reconstruction from data, network analysis and visualization (GEPHI), modeling (NetLogo). Distributed computing facilities will be made available for projects (OpenMole), so that projects requiring intensive simulations and processing can be led.

Tutorials
Specific tutorials (GEPHI, NetLogo and OpenMole) will be given, so that attendees could quickly converge towards the required knowledge on these shared platforms. Each work group will be followed daily by a dedicated teacher, to make sure methodological and technical gaps are filled in. Therefore, no specific knowledge, either in GEPHI, NetLogo or OpenMole is required to attend this school.

This new series of international Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS2011) is organized by the Complex Systems Institute Paris Île-de-France (ISC-PIF), in coordination with the overarching National Network of Complex Systems (RNSC) and & the Complex Systems Institute Rhône-Alpes (IXXI). Our Summer School is also one of the "Thematic School" supported by the CNRS.

The summer school will take place in Paris at the ISC-PIF: 57-59 rue Lhomond,75005, Paris, France

Invited Teachers

Lectures
  • Marc barthelemy, CEA (IPhT)/EHESS (CAMS), France
  • Nathalie Corson, Laboratoire de Mathématiques Appliquées du Havre, France
  • René Doursat, ISC-PIF, France
  • Sebastian Grauwin, ENS Lyon/IXXI, France
  • Jean-Loup Guillaume, LIP6, France
  • Hidde de Jong, INRIA, France
  • Luciano Pietronero, Physics Department, Rome University "La Sapienza", Italy
  • Camille Roth, CAMS/ISC-PIF, France

Tutorials and/or group projects following
Netlogo Arnaud Banos | Nathalie Corson | Jeremy Fiegel | Sebastian Grauwin |Nicolas Marilleau | Clara Schmitt
GEPHI Julian Bilcke | David Chavalarias
Open Mole Mathieu Leclaire | Romain Reuillon

Applying to the Summer School

The application tuition rate is €500 for the whole school. Tuition rate includes:

Important:
From the first announcement day until the registration deadline (31 May), each application will be studied as soon as we receive it (first-come, first-served). If the applicant is selected, a registration confirmation will be quickly sent. We expect each selected applicant to confirm its registration in the week after reception of our email - and to pay the school fees when the dedicated web site will be open (15 May).

Why these rules? Because the school is organized for 25 people only, due to the importance of group projects during this summer school (50% of the total time). Moreover, the sooner you are confirmed, the sooner you can book your flight tickets!

Overview of important dates:
  • Application deadline: May 31
  • Notification of acceptance of applications: after reception of each application (first-come, first-served)
  • Payment website opening: May 15

WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU TO APPLY AS SOON AS YOU CAN (the school is limited to 25!).

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Final Geospatial Revolution Episode

Over the last few months the Geospatial Revolution Project from Penn State has created some great short documentaries about the use of GIS in our daily lives.

To quote from the site:
"The mission of the Geospatial Revolution Project is to expand public knowledge about the history, applications, related privacy and legal issues, and the potential future of location-based technologies"

The final episode focuses on monitoring global climate change, preventing famine, tracking disease and mapping communities never before seen on a map.


The other three episodes are:
  1. The introduction of the geospatial revolution
  2. Explore local governments and business use geospatial technology
  3. Explores geospatial technology in the world of security
If you not seen any of these, they really are worth checking out.